Not sure why, but I think it's the Keilwerth involvement.
I suspect that you're correct.
In the case of the Hohner President, I suspect it's because the horns are German, and people in Germany actually know who Max Keilwerth is. Over here, most people don't know about him, and many think that the Presidents were stencil horns, or whatever. There are so many rumours and misconceptions floating around about them. Or at least there were. I think
my Hohner page is slowly starting to have an impact.
In the case of D&J, when I bought my horn over 2 years ago, there was virtually no information available in English.
I posted a question in the Woodwind Forum when I first saw the DeVilliers in a store, but none of the sources that I or Pete listed (which were all the English sources on the 'Net at the time) had the complete story. Interestingly enough, not even Germany had the complete story behind the horns. It wasn't until last summer that
Uwe Ladwig published the company history in
Sonic Sax & Brass. It is Uwe's D&J research that I have translated (with Uwe's permission) and added to--as I've found new data--to create
my D&J page.
The emblem on it is bugging me, I've seen it before, but can't remember where/when. Maybe a couple of bidders recognised it.... But the least I'd expect it to go for would be about 100 euros. parts horns go for 50-100, and this, clearly, is a lot better than that.
Another factor here is that the buyer hasa lot more protection, and junk horns are sold as being for parts, restoration, or for rebuild. The sellers are usually clear about this, so the buying risk is less and I think this reflects in the price. Often a playable horn will be described as 'OK, but would be better if serviced' or similar.
If someone people recognized it, that might explain the # of bids. Either that, or 2 people just got very busy, and tried to outbid each other. :???: I think it's an interesting horn, and it's quite possible that because Europe has many people than North America, you'll have more collectors and wanna' be repair people. Add to that the higher prices in Europe, and the chances of something so nondescript selling for over $325 US makes sense.
As far as I know, you're right about the small shops, and workers at the factories would buy a body, keys and so on and build horns at home. They'd also take work from the factories do it at home then deliver it back to the factories for payment. afik there's a lot of commonality in parts between the makes. And it makes identifying these horns really difficult if there isn't a maker's inscription. Stencils are common, often with a music shop's name on it as the only id.
Max & Julius worked from home when they first started. At the time they worked for the Adler company. And Joseph Dörfler worked for Julius Keilwerth in a similar situation before he started D&J. We see this a lot with Italian horns as well. My mysterious
Gallotone tenor is a great example. It looks like a mix of Orsi and Rampone & Cazzani. Even the current R&C owner didn't know. He figured it most likely came from one of the small cottage industry shops in Italy.
Lots of info on saxwelt.de, but I guess you know that already.
saxwelt? What's saxwelt? ;-)