Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

George Gruhn has a few good sentences in this month's VG.

The "Golden Age" of American instruments is the 50's, and early 60's. They aren't making them any more, and it's not going to change. There are many investors who probably wish they had gone to cash twelve months ago and bought into tangibles. Vintage guitars will remain a popular area for many, and original high end gear will always be coveted.

Sometimes I think Gruhn and other vintage dealers say things like that to ensure their livelihoods.

Only sometimes?

kiramdear wrote:I don't blame them for placing value on a great instrument, but I just hope their interest won't drive the price of every decent old guitar through the roof for us lowly worker bees. Is that a possibility?

Nah.....only on certain models.

For instance, some 20+ years ago, collectors figured that Pre-CBS Strats were the IN thing to have, so the prices went nuts (along with Burst Les Pauls of course), but you could still pick up some great post-CBS strats on the cheap, and refins were dirt cheap in comparison (and CBS era, at least in the 60s still made some great guitars, and refins are FINE instruments).

But....you could still get Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Mustangs, etc. etc.....super cheap. Collectors deemed that only Strats, Teles, Les Pauls, and a few other models were worth BIG money- everything else is still moderately affordable.

Stuff like Pre CBS strats and Any Les Paul 1954-1969 hasn't been affordable for us "worker bees" in over 25 years (by a longshot...)

On affordable vintage guitars, add Mosrites Collin. Still under $4k for a '65 Ventures if you look hard enough. Now I think about it, mid '60s Ricks are relatively cheap too.... with the obvious exceptions of course.

On another angle, the whole "they're not making them anymore" statement by Gruhn is wonderful. They're not making agent orange anymore either.

Guitars are being made today to a higher and more consistent quality than they were in the '50s and '60s, though not necessarily by Fender and Gibson. So quality has little to do with price levels.

The vintage guitar gig has become like baseball cards or fine art. Value is purely driven by "investment" demand. Once "investors" ( and their near-kin, speculators) get into market, then everyone else is driven out, unless they have very fat wallets. The price level is self-sustaining, as the restricted supply is tightly held. We'll only see a correction if one of the larger investors is forced to liquidate their portfolio, which may not be out of the question in today's economy. If so, the correction could be brutal.

jingle_jangle wrote:Only sometimes?

I was being nice!

this one hardly even counts as it is really just a charitable donation

Most Expensive Guitar in the World
by Heather Strobel

“Blackie”, Eric Clapton’s favorite mid-career modified Strat has been surpassed in value and is no longer the most expensive guitar ever, despite that it was bought for $950,000 USD in 2004 by a guitar archaeologist.

The latest most expensive electric guitar in the world dethroned its predecessor at an auction in Doha, Qatar on November 16th, 2005. The Strat was signed by several rock musicians to benefit a tsunami charity, ‘Reach out to Asia’. It was bought one year ago by Qatar’s royal family for a million dollars and donated back to the Asia Program, bringing in $2.7 million USD at the more recent auction, whose attendees included Former President Bill Clinton. Technically, the guitar has generated a total of $3.7 million USD, making it the most expensive guitar yet.

Signees of this expensive electric guitar included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Mark Knopfler, Ray Davis, Liam Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Tony Iommi, Angus & Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney, Sting, Ritchie Blackmore, Def Leppard, and Bryan Adams, the coordinator of the project.
http://most-expensive.net/guitar-in-world

and if you/re going to have the most expensive guitar, you might as well get the most expensive guitar pick.... (although for the life of me I cannot understand why they say a pick made out of rock would "last forever".... yea... I guess it would since at almost $5k you'd NEVER use it. http://www.luxuo.com/most-expensive/guitar-pick.html
Australian company Starpics has created a completely unique pair of guitar picks made from meteors.

Said to be around 4 billion years old, Gibeon meteorites were discovered in 1836 in Namibia, Africa, where their sale and export were banned by the local government. Despite that fact, over twenty-five tons of the meteorites have been recovered and it is the most commonly found meteorite on the market today.

One of the most interesting things about the meteorites is the pattern of Widmanstatten lines created by their frigid passage through space. These patterns are preserved in the picks and can be seen in the picture above.

These guitar picks are priced at $4,674 and guaranteed to last forever.

They may be made from a rock, but I'm not sure I could roll with those picks

brammy wrote:I wonder what it sold for back in 1957?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0301795004
VINTAGE 1957 GIBSON LES PAUL GOLD TOP ELECTRIC GUITAR
Buy It Now price: US $112,500.00

77688.F.jpg

Well, that's it! If there was any question as to whether or not I didn't like Les Pauls before, I definitely don't like them now!

A perfectly good instrument rendered unplayable by market value.

Not unplayable, Joshua...just unplayed...

Here's what I don't get: why didn't the Royal Family in Qatar reach for their checkbook the moment the tsunami hit? What the hell does an autographed guitar have to do with anything? And why didn't all those musicans put their autographs on checks as well? With that bunch, a lot more than a million bucks could have been donated...

Million dollar guitars, five thousand dollar guitar picks...this stuff makes me ill. A guy in a cowboy hat once approached me at 30,000 feet above the Pacific and tried to interest me in guitar picks made from endangered sea turtle shells. "Ever'body in Nashville's using 'em", he assured me. I was going to ask if he had any 5B drumsticks made from the leg bones of Cambodian children, but I decided to just let it go...

wayang wrote:A guy in a cowboy hat once approached me at 30,000 feet above the Pacific and tried to interest me in guitar picks made from endangered sea turtle shells. "Ever'body in Nashville's using 'em", he assured me. I was going to ask if he had any 5B drumsticks made from the leg bones of Cambodian children, but I decided to just let it go...

He keeps the drumsticks on his leopard rug next to the real mounted dodo lamp.

Seriously, endangered sea turtles??? "You don't get it, the sound is so much better if the harvested animal is endangered."

Speaking of picks.... try taking one of those thin hot liquid drinking cups (not the thicker styrofoam ones), cut a piece out and then tri-fold it into a pick-like shape. (ie: pick will be 3 material thicknesses thick)

It yields a very nice soft jazzy sound, and feels a whole lot better than those felt pics. Also, the price is right.

Kinda like the $5000 a plate fundraisers Hollywood puts on that cost about $5500 a person to pull off.

johnallg wrote:Kinda like the $5000 a plate fundraisers Hollywood puts on that cost about $5500 a person to pull off.

That sounds like a very interesting Hollywood party!