What to buy, a guitar or a house.
Posted by scottfrein on April 4, 2008
If you’ve read any of my posts you probably know that I love guitars. I love everything about guitars. I would own more guitars if I could. What I don’t love are the astronomical prices for vintage instruments. The market on vintage guitars is crazy. Some prices are so high, they rival the California housing market. ($500k for a small 2 bedroom post WWII tract house in a crappy part of the San Fernando Valley or $500k for a ‘58 burst.)
There used to be a time where you could hit the local pawn shop and find a Fender or Gibson in decent used shape for not a lot of dough. Nowadays, the pawn shops and vintage dealers are all on each other’s speed dial and any decent instrument that comes into a pawn shop is usually sold to a vintage dealer before it even sees the wall.
The sad part here is that most of these great old instruments will never get into the hands of true players who can really make them shine. They are usually in a display case, or a safe. While they may be appreciating in value, they are not being appreciated for what they are, great instruments worthy of making music so many years after leaving the factory.
I vowed long ago not to give vintage gear a second thought. Although I am fortunate to have a couple of pieces of vintage gear, they are not the highly coveted and super collectible items. They are just really good instruments that happened to be made before I was born.
