86-year-old fiddler believes he paid $75 for a Stradivarius

LEWISTON – The violin that O’Neil Gagnon bought last year for $75 may or may not be a Stradivarius, but the 86-year-old country fiddler insists that he wouldn’t sell it at any price.

“I’ve handled a thousand violins in my life,” he said. “This one is better than all of them.”

A Stradivarius can fetch more than $1 million at auction, and violin expert Lynn Hannings of Pownal says it’s extraordinarily unlikely that Gagnon’s is the genuine article.

Don’t try to tell that to Gagnon, who says his 79 years of playing violins have led him to believe he has a Stradivarius.

How is he so sure? He knows by the “song” it makes, the way its sound echoes through a room when he slides his bow across the strings.

He knows because its rock maple belly bulges just the right way. And he knows because he feels it.

He bought the instrument from a man who answered Gagnon’s magazine ad looking for old violins. The man brought him a dusty shell of a violin that had been left in an attic. There were no pegs, no strings. Spiders lived inside.

It looked solid, and it had a special trim of wood that lined the edges and a piece that reinforced the length. It also had an intriguing label, one that has been counterfeited and copied for centuries.

After cleaning the instrument, Gagnon gave the label a closer look. Peering inside with a penlight, he read: “Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1733.”

The Latin words indicate it was made by Antonio Stradivari in the town of Cremona, Italy, in the year of our Lord, 1733.

Violins made by Stradivari are either long-ago destroyed or held by the wealthy, and Hannings doesn’t think Gagnon found a diamond in the rough.

“He’d have a better chance winning the lottery,” Hannings said. “They don’t exist out there because they’re so valuable.”

According to the Smithsonian Institution, about 650 of the 1,100 or so violins, cellos, harps and guitars made by the Italian master still exist.

Labels don’t mean a thing.

The Smithsonian’s site on the Internet warns against assuming the name, wood-engraved on the inside, suggests the craftsman made the violin.

“The presence of a Stradivarius label in a violin has no bearing on whether the instrument is genuine,” said the site.

The label was made by hundreds of makers in several countries often as a sign that the violin was constructed in the style of the famous Italian, not by the man himself.

Gagnon has heard the argument, but still believes his is genuine.

And even if it’s not a Stradivarius, it’s still a gem, he said.

Gagnon, a retired state trooper and gun shop owner, played old-time country tunes for crowds in his home state of Connecticut. And when he owned a barbershop in Presque Isle, he’d fiddle for the people who stopped by.

He rarely performs anymore, but he plays at home every day.

“I play some waltzes and jigs,” he said, leaning the dark brown violin on his shoulder and lazily sawing with the bow.

“It’s worth a lot, an awful lot,” he said. “But I’ll never sell.”