A used Yamaha YAS-280 sells for around €875 on Marktplaats this week. New, the same saxophone costs €985. Three or four years of playing cost the first owner roughly a hundred euros in total.
That number is the whole argument. A saxophone from Yamaha's student line barely loses value. You can buy it new, play it for years, then sell it for nearly what you paid.
The YAS-280 is the alto that most Dutch music schools put in a beginner's hands. Brass body, gold lacquer, a key layout refined over decades. It plays in tune straight out of the case, which is the reason it matters. Beginners give up on instruments that fight them. They keep going on one that answers cleanly. Every pad, cork and spring inside it can be replaced by any repair tech in the country. A leak at year ten gets serviced and the horn plays on. Nothing electronic can fail.
Set that against the instrument most people reach for first. The €298 starter sax from a catalogue brand looks identical in the photo. It arrives with pads that seat poorly and a tone that flattens across the range. It resells for fifty euros if it sells at all. Most of them end their life in a cupboard. The money spent on it is gone.
Here is the ownership cost across the first three years, resale included.
| Over 3 years | Yamaha YAS-280 | €298 starter sax |
|---|---|---|
| Buy price | €985 | €298 |
| Resale | around €875 | around €50 |
| Net cost | around €110 | around €248 |
| Still being played | yes | rarely |
The cheaper saxophone costs you more than twice as much to own. It takes your enthusiasm with it on the way out. Reeds are the only real running cost. They cost the same whichever horn you blow them through.
Brass tells the truth over time. The lacquer wears thin where your right thumb rests and where the palm keys catch the light. The instrument reads as something played and looked after. A Yamaha student alto from the 1990s still turns up on Marktplaats. It holds a price and it works. You hand it to a child or sell it to the next beginner and recover most of your outlay. Value that stays inside the object is the patina dividend in its clearest form.
The verdict. Around €110 to own for three years, most of your money back when you sell, and an alto that still plays in thirty years.