✅ THIS INSTRUMENT HAS BEEN RECOVERED
- Asset Class: Musical Instrument
- Make/Model: Custom Weltmeister Button Accordion
- Status: RECOVERED
- General Location: Oakland, CA
A custom Weltmeister Button Accordion, uniquely designed and played by professional musician Renee de la Prade, has been successfully recovered! Originally stolen during a burglary at an Extra Space Storage facility in Oakland’s Jack London Square, the instrument’s digital footprint and an extensive social media campaign led to its safe return.
A buyer purchased the stolen accordion at the Concord flea market for $300. After searching online for information about the unique instrument, he found the widespread theft notices and promptly returned the accordion to Smythe’s Accordion Center, where Renee was successfully reunited with it.
In an email to our team, Renee credited the crowdsourced recovery effort:
“My accordion just got returned! A man bought my instrument at the Concord flea market for $300. He looked online for information about the instrument, and found my posts, and returned the accordion… I couldn’t be happier. So…. I don’t exactly know what website the mystery man saw my accordion on, but Stolen 911 was probably the site that got my accordion back! I also posted this instrument on Facebook, the Reyes Music Forum and the melodeon.net forum, but I didn’t get any messages about the accordion through these channels so I’m guessing that your awesome database saved the day. Woo-hoo! Thanks so much for your help!”
Original Case Details:
The accordion is a highly customized instrument, roughly 13 inches tall, featuring a dark walnut finish, black pearl buttons, and red wood-key details. It has a custom brass grill with hearts etched into the design and a gold heart on the black bellows. When the bellows open, a black, red, and gold Japanese paper design is visible in the folds.
It utilizes a unique three-reed system with a low octave and a single stop. The treble side is diatonic in the keys of D/Eb with 21 buttons, while the bass side is a custom bi-directional layout that goes up in whole tones using 12 buttons. A Smythe’s Accordion microphone system (part number 248) is installed in the brass grill. At the time of the theft, it was stored in a simple black suitcase covered with a pin-up girl sticker and a “Fuck Yeah” sticker.
*Privacy Notice: To protect the integrity of law enforcement records, all specific identifying information—including serial numbers, original dates of theft, Stolen 911 case numbers, and police files—has been permanently removed from this archived listing.
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