Every used listing says works perfectly. Here's how to tell when it's lying.

Most of my board came from other people's regret. I have bought used since 2011: Reverb, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, one parking lot outside a Guitar Center that I do not recommend as a venue. Call it forty pedals, five amps, four guitars. Two of those deals went bad, and both times the listing had told me exactly what was coming and I paid anyway. So now I read listings the way an insurance adjuster reads a claim, and the red flags are so consistent, across platforms and price points, that the whole system fits in one short article.

Start with the photos. A listing with only stock photos is not a listing, it is a mood board. In 2019 I found a mint ProCo Rat 2 for $70 with a single image: the catalog shot, white background, perfect drop shadow. I asked for a picture of the actual pedal next to a spoon from the seller's kitchen. Any spoon. The listing was gone by morning. A seller who owns the pedal takes that photo in forty seconds. A seller who cannot produce the spoon photo does not own the pedal, or owns a version of it you do not want. Velcro on the bottom is fine. Chipped paint is fine. The absence of the pedal is not fine.

Then read the phrase works perfectly and ask two questions: according to whom, and when. Amps are where this flag bites hardest. In 2022 I chased a 1974 silverface Champ on Marketplace, $550, works perfectly, just serviced. I asked for a thirty-second phone video: plug in, strum a chord, sweep the volume knob. The seller told me the amp was at his mother's house. Two weeks later the same Champ came back at $450 with a new sentence in the description: small hum, easy fix. The hum was always there. My question was just the first time anyone made him turn the amp on. Works perfectly with no clip means worked, past tense, at an unknown volume, during an unknown decade. Its cousins are selling for a friend, no way to test it, and moved and lost the power cable. A replacement power cable costs $10 and every seller knows it. The cable is not lost. The amp stopped turning on.

Mystery mods are the flag I paid tuition on. In 2016 I bought a Deluxe Memory Man on Reverb for $180 because the listing said chip upgrade and true bypass mod by a local tech. No tech named, no gut shot. It arrived with clock whine I could hear over a full band and a footswitch wired so the dry signal dropped about 3 dB with the pedal off, which is the opposite of what true bypass means. My tech charged $75 to put it back to stock and handed me the rule I now apply to every modded listing: a real mod comes with a receipt. Ask for the tech's name and a photo of the circuit board. A seller who paid for good work brags about it in detail, because the detail is the value. A seller typing the word professionally in front of modded did the work himself, in both senses.

On guitars, count the photos and notice what is missing. Last summer a Les Paul Standard appeared on Marketplace at $1,100 with seven photos and not one of the back of the headstock. Body front, body back, case candy, fretboard glamour shot, no serial. I asked. He said he would check when he got home, and then never got home, apparently, ever. The cropped-out headstock is the one place a fake or a stolen guitar cannot hide, and a missing serial shot means one of those two stories. You do not need to know which. The price was the other tell: a used Standard runs about $2,000 street, so $1,100 is not a deal you found, it is bait that found you. Lo (lo.flannery) flips more gear in a month than I buy in a year, and she prices everything about 5 percent under the sold-listings median so it moves inside a week. Five percent under is a motivated seller. Forty percent under is a story, and the person who taught me that distinction is the person doing the most honest selling I know.