1890 Felice Pappalardo Italy Naples Signed Mandolin Guitar..

[victorulloa1987]

Inside the guitar read's

felice pappalardo fabricante di sprumenti a corda napoli 1890

Which Translates to,
Felice Pappalardo, stringed instruments maker. Neaples -1890 ('sprumenti a corda' litterally means instruments with strings; sprumenti is an ancient word of Neaples for the modern italian 'strumenti').

And Neaples has always been famous for its musical-instruments' craftsmen.

So i know the instrument is from 1890 as shown in the pictures also as it states in the guitar, and all this i found out online.
After searching and searching i came across an ebay listing, which had a picture of the guitar that i own, in slightly better condition, however the stamp inside is much diffrent, and this seller indicates that the guitar is signed, which mine also appears to be signed,

here is the link to this page, i think its very simular to mine and can help in determing the value and history of this instrument including its maker.

After countless hours of yet again searching.. i found through google image search a link to a museum website that had a simular looking mandolin and found out the the guitar also contains what is called "mother of pearls" hope this helps in helping someone help me with more information on this guitar thank you

[Spud1950]

As far as appearance,both your mandolin and the one in the auction are typical bowl back style of that era, but the one on Ebay is a much finer instrument. Even if yours were in similar much better condition, it wouldn't be worth as much as that one. As to the value of yours, in it's present condition it's worthless. It's certainly not the worth the cost of having pay someone to put back into playable condition, if that's even possible given it's present condition.Sorry to be so blunt,but that's the truth of it.

Here's another for sale from the same era. Not as fine as the one on Bay,it's much more typical of the quality of what yours once was. They're asking price is also too high. I've seen lots of others similar this sell for far less.





Bowl back mandolins are not very popular and don't really sell very well. They are considered to be more wall decorators then players.The Gibson and other similar style mandolins are what people who actually play want. Here's a good article from Mandozine about the different styles of mandolins,including bowl backs.

[victorulloa1987]

Thanks for your input, I think ill just hang on to this instrument its got more value to me than anything else

[opotable]

it's a mandolin and not a guitar. the ebay one looks interesting but nowhere near $450 nice.