For sale is a beautiful Martin Handcraft C Melody saxophone!
This horn is a prime early golden era Martin serial #18,2xx with its matching stamped serial #18,2xx neck!
This horn features incredible popping silk and satin silver plated body + gold plated key work and gold plated inner wash bell in great condition!
This saxophone is one of the earliest Martin saxophones ever produced.
Martin first started producing trumpets, trombones, cornets other brass instruments. It wasn't until somewhere in the serial number 17,000s that there first saxophone was produced.
Most likely Martin didn't just instantly hit with full bore sax production right off the bat.
Most likely at first it was just a small trickle of test saxophones, then some initial small batches, then they finally "turned on" full sax production, during this whole time producing brass instruments part of the same serial numbers.
So there couldn't have been all that many saxophones produced between the first Martin saxophone and this horn. Its definitely one of the best examples condition wise floating around.
We are sure there are more out there that have sold or are hanging around, but if you scour the internet theres really only a few recorded instances of Martin saxophones with serial numbers this early that pop up.
This saxophone is also in amazing condition for its age and what it is.
Like every other saxophone 100+ years in age generally these horns are found in trashed condition with various combinations of missing parts, missing necks, relaqs, horrible trauma, or what ever other weird conditions that show up.
This saxophone is in particularly great condition. The horn has some typical scratching, knicks, light dings, metal wear, silver wear, patina, other used marks. But aside from typical things this horn is in awesome condition
This saxophone comes with a case thats possibly the horns factory case, however there is no Martin branding or logos on the case. The horn seems to fit the case perfectly though. Its possible this is a random case to.
This horn is sitting on its white pads and will need a full overhaul and pad job to be any kind of functional saxophone.
When the next owner overhauls this horn the transformation is going to be amazing. Once this horn is fully cleaned, polished and shined up, all of the silver & gold is going to come alive and look amazing.
This horn is on sale at our Los Angeles, California saxophone showroom store and can sell at any point so if you have been looking for a Martin please buy and pay confidently we will ship ASAP upon payment!