I'm new to the vintage section here but just wanted to say I have recently bought a salvage 1915 L-3 for restoration. Before one discounts an L-3 guitar as unworthy of restoration, one might want to research actual selling prices on e-bay of salvage instruments and instruments in playing condition. Mine was bought for over $600. Two recent sales of playable L2 and L3 models were well over twice that price. On mine, all the wood is there, but it has some separations due to water damage. It is missing the bridge, the pick-guard and the pegs for the tailpiece. The original tuners were gone so I have fitted it with original Gibson bushings and vintage Grover tuners whose buttons are identical to the Gibson originals. Pck823, your tuners are original. That odd little serrated pattern at the ends is apparent in the finish on my headstock as the imprint of the original tuner plates. Mine is the same "orange top" and cherry mahogany combo as this one. It was purchased from a seller in Mobile, Alabama.
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Yes your L-3 has a nasty break. But the back is already off so there is easy access for a professional repair to that crack. The labor will be intensive, but yours is a Gibson I would have paid a few hundred for to restore. The tuners alone are worth a small bundle (I paid $80 for the Grovers), and that celluloid tortoise tailpiece disappears in later year models as does the fancier inlaid headstock. Just collector details. Some people collect these so that they have an example of what a 1915 or so Gibson sounds like. Otherwise one would just not know. People do buy these to restore, and restored ones sell for reasonably higher prices than the salvages. One might argue that it is not a collectible guitar, but there is an active commerce in buying, restoring and reselling this model as a player's guitar;- while possibly an eccentric player's guitar.
Other interesting detail;- the mahogany cherry finish on the back is a dead color match for my 1969 cherry mahogany SG standard. The tuner bushings were apparently unchanged in dimension for some 50 years and are interchangeable on almost all Gibsons. I hope someone restoring the guitar winds up with it and you get some value from it. It might have brought $200- $400+ on e-bay.
