Chiff and Fipple Forums

Dear Friends,

On Sunday, June 22, Michael Copeland had an aluminum briefcase stolen which contained various prototypes and "opus 1" whistles and flutes. Although the collection to a criminal would not be that valuable, the intrinsic and emotional value of the contents of this case are huge. Should you gain any information regarding this aluminum case, please contact Michael at copelandwoodwinds@yahoo.com or you can contact me.

Thank you for your kind consideration.

These shouldn't be too hard to spot honestly. Where were they stolen Bob? Most likely, the thief is going to either try selling local or ebay. Ebay is easy to watch. Local, well...that depends on who lives nearby.

Dear Scheky,

They were stolen in the Greater Philadelphia area. Thank you for your comment and suggestions.

Man, that sucks. Stealing Scumbags. Chances are they will end up in a pawn shop somewhere.

Do you know if all or some of the instruments had serial numbers on them? Hopefully Mike kept and Opus Book with this info? Having access to the serial numbers, if the instruments were marked, would help us keep an eye out for them.

Loren

Dear Loren,

With the exception of Michael Burke's instruments, I have never seen a serial number on a whistle in my life. That would have been a great idea if Mr. Copeland had etched number, but he did not.

Thanks for the suggestion,

That's a shame.
I live in Philly and I'll keep an eye out in the classifieds and outlets to see if anything turns up.

Bob the Whistler wrote:Dear Loren,

With the exception of Michael Burke's instruments, I have never seen a serial number on a whistle in my life. That would have been a great idea if Mr. Copeland had etched number, but he did not.

Thanks for the suggestion,

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the info. Guess I'm having a senior moment as I thought I recalled serial numbers on some of the later (purchased about 5-7 years ago) Copelands I owned. Ah well, my memory ain't what it used to be.

Some recorder makers put a number on the fipple block, which can only be seen when it is removed from the instrument, so I thought this was perhaps possible with Mike's instruments as well, although I only ever removed the block from one, and I didn't recall specifically if it was marked or not.

I'll be back in the Philly/West Chester area for a few days during the 4th Holiday and will make it a point to stop in any pawn shops I happen to run across in my travels. It's a one in a million chance that I'd actually come across the whistles, but stranger things have happened.

My best wishes to Mike if you talk to him.


Loren

A local friend had all his instruments stolen last week out of his apartment. Interestingly, the thieves took only the instruments and replaced the empty cases in their normal locations. Violins, uillean pipes, mandolins. . .all gone.

It has been said that this sort of theft usually ends up selling on the opposite coast.

Very sad

One thing worth doing would be to keep an eye out on Craigslist, both local and national, although I never really found a good way to search the whole of craigslist at once.

Loren

Some production Copeland whistles do indeed have stamped serial numbers, located on the back of the tuning slide collar. My vintage-2000 Copeland has a serial number in the 2xxx range, and Michael had the sales record for this instrument when we spoke. But I imagine that prototypes are not serialized.

Bob, you should also post this notice on thesession.org, which reaches a slightly different set of eyes.

Tyghress, if your friend's instruments are identifiable, a notice here and on the various uilleann and folk boards could be helpful. The Lost/Stolen/Missing Forum here is probably an under-used resource.

Good luck to all.

MT,

On my way to thesession.org. Thanks for the tip.

Loren wrote:One thing worth doing would be to keep an eye out on Craigslist, both local and national, although I never really found a good way to search the whole of craigslist at once.

There's an easy way to do that, Loren.
You can do a google search on:
site:craigslist.org copeland whistle
and you'll find any mention of a Copeland whistle on any Craigslist site.

The first part of the search query is: site:theDomain, which is the domain you're asking about. This will work for all of the Craigslists around the world.

The second part is the words you're looking for, same as always.

You can make it more complicated. If, for example, you click on the advanced search link, you add a feature that limits the search by a date range (like the last week). That helps because it gives you a much smaller number of pages to check.

This link should work, although I've had hide the actual URL to prevent it from blowing out this page.
A long link that should show you a time-limited search