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10 reasons why vintage guitars are not worth the money


guitar_randy

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I have a job that someone would look at as state of the art A/V I can tell you that electronics 2 years ago cannot compete

in todays market. That is what I tell my customers who say my Machintosh receiver is better than any Denon, Marantz

Sony,Pioneer,HK or Yamaha product. NEW IS BETTER in some cases

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I think the post hit on a lot of good points particularly regarding the state of the vintage guitar market as a commodity market. I agree with the poster that the vintage guitar market has a long way to go on the downside. It is illiquid, no transaction transparency, lack of knowledge of product by a lot of the participants, easy to counterfeit - all suggest it will not end well.

 

Just last week there were seven distinct offerings for '52 LP GT's. Can that be possible? Weren't there only ~1700 made? How many of the 1700 still exist and of the existing ones how many could be considered original or authentic?

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Yeah, I went into his place with quite a wad of money a few summers ago. Didn't feel welcome in there at all. Ed was in there moaning about something, and I had to pry one of the dudes up to even speak to me. I was the only person in there who wasn't an employee. The girl at the reception desk couldn't find the energy to call a cab for me. She dispatched me down the street to some casino where the cabbies hang out. I saw them as what they are--a bunch of jerks.

 

I never really thought about buying guitars just as investments but if Ed Roman is this much against it I might look into it?

 

what a putz #-o

 

going into his shop almost made me take up a different hobby

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Maybe we've done Ed Roman a bit of a disservice.

Hmmmmm.....

The points he raises are valid - every single one - whether you agree with him or not.

Many are indeed accurate.

His rants are informative both pro and con, and gives you a little insight to the workings of his mind.

He's been somewhat successful over the years, I don't know what his bank accounts or assets look like now.

His store went thru some major "difficulties" recently.

That being said.........

He opened that diatribe with a disclaimer in the first line - check it out;

 

I did not write this, I agree with most of it, some of it is reaching a little too far but for the most part it makes sense. In my opinion the only reason any vintage guitar plays or sounds better is simply because the value is high enough where their owners only take them to first class luthiers.

 

THAT is a damned good point.

First class care over the life of the guitar.

I'll dare to add my own thought to the Wisdom & Greatness of Ed Roman if lightning doesn't strike me down...

 

Think of the long, tortured path a guitar might take over a span of several decades.

We have to assume it was a well-made guitar to begin with, best one to leave the factory that day.

You know, some guitars just have it.....

It was finished, packed and shipped with care.

Sent to a dealer by freight and arrived without damage or exposure to harsh climate swings.

Being the very best guitar in the store, it is purchased by a knowing, seasoned musician who cared for it properly.

 

Remember, in the 1950's and even the early sixties, the electric guitar was a new-fangled oddity to MOST people.

How many people knew all the tricks to keep them in tip-top condition?

 

It would have been played with care, at long but regular intervals, to ensure neck stability and playability.

Any minor adjustments to the action would have been made only when needed.

Care would have been taken to see the need was met well before any lasting structural harm was suffered.

 

By this, I mean it wasn't stuck in an attic for 15 years and the action was an inch high with a boomerang neck.

OR....

The strings were loosened for storage and rusted to barbed wire. That always results in a back bowed neck.

Leaves strings stretched tight across the frets, same as the truss rod being over-tightened. Bad deal either way.

You cannot store a guitar for years ANYWHERE without checking the condition of it.

Once the neck is bowed bad enough, I'm guessing a number of these guitars from the fifties went into the fireplace.

If they bothered to pull the PAF's out of them, they probably sat in the garage for a few years and got thrown in the trash.

I digress. Remember, this guitar is the best of the best so none of that happened to it.

 

At some point it leaves the hands of the original owner.

Does a son get it, equally aware of its nostalgic value and more skilled in the care maintenance with decades of experience?

He's wise enough to skip the eighties trend of putting a tremolo on everything with strings.

The guitar remains unmolested in safe keeping until it is discovered it is actually worth MONEY now.

Hmmmm.....

 

Well, it could use a set up. It hasn't been played much in years.

So it's taken to a GOOD, honest luthier for an opinion on its condition and worth.

The old-school luthier has owned many of these over the years and wishes he still had HIS!

He chokes back the tears of regret and caresses the beauty before him, and proceeds to make it PERFECT.

They DO NOT make them like this anymore. Good or bad, it's a fact.

New strings, after a careful and thorough cleaning the intonation is set dead on.

It now plays better than ever, because for the first time in 35 years it was done with painstaking care and precision.

None of the new guitars in the store are ANYTHING like this, it is truly collectible.

 

The guitar is now a legend.

The value is starting to rise on all its sisters, but NONE of them are this nice.

Years pass by.

Finally the time comes for the guitar to leave the safety it has enjoyed and enter the cruel world of money and lies.

It is finally sold to that old luthier for a princely sum, with the intent he can sell it to a collector at a profit.

Collector comes in, sees it as the Holy Grail and throws down hundreds of hundred dollar bills.

Now the guitar goes into a vault, with regular visits from a skilled technician to attend to it.

Waiting for the market to rise enough, or boredom of the owner to cast it back to the sharks.

 

How many of THESE guitars are out there?

Think of the life of most musicians, few have any money or stability in thier life.

The few with money are busy attending to their financial empire or getting stoned and neglect the guitar.

The guitars get stolen, stolen again, pissed off girlfriends kick them over, drunks pour beer on them....

When they travel, it's in cargo on a plane or worse - a truck or bus.

Huge temp and humidity swings make them play like sh!t, so they are tweaked on constantly until the truss rod breaks.

They get passed around, bought, sold and traded, misused and abused until somebody decides to fix it.

So then it gets refinished to make it just like new, or modified to make it BETTER than new.

When it becomes collectible, the REAL LIES and DECEPTION begin.

"Yeah, it was owned by (insert guitar god here) and given to his roadie as a gift but he had a kidney transplant..."

 

You buy an old guitar based on what you see.

Any info is suspect.

Don't trust ANYBODY, not even your own mother, when lotsa money is involved.

Then after you have carefully weighed all the possibilities, and considered all the advice, do whatever the hell you want.

It's YOUR money, and YOUR guitar.

 

 

Back to Ed Roman, my original post still stands.

The guy is a player on the same level as PT Barnum.

 

Some valid observations there' date=' but Roman is kinda like reading the National Enquirer.

Just enough truth to make you think the rest of his crazy sh!t is plausible.

 

Ed Roman is no dummy.

An *** beyond measure? Yes, but not a dummy.

 

I've met the man, attempted twice to buy a Rickenbacker from him. He made it impossible.

A hint for future reference - a good place to start negotiating is to tell me what the price is.

When a guy has a few thousand in cash in his pocket and tells you he WANTS to buy a guitar.....

 

Couldn't get a straight answer from him, so I waited a year for one to come into Bizarre Guitar in Phoenix.

 

Unbelievable.

Gives slimey used car/snake oil salesmen a bad name.

 

Don't get me wrong, his Vegas store was a sight to see and you can learn ALOT from him!

Just keep your money in your pocket until you're ready for some combination of guitar buying and prison sex.[/quote']

 

Seems he has an uncomfortable familiarity with that guy **** Gozinya in point #2.

Probably sends Christamas cards to him - with a check inside for all his help during the year.

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He's a crook.

He's an ***.

He's very knowledgeable.

He sells nice guitars.

He makes junk guitars in house and sells them too - in the same showroom.

You decide which is which. Price is not an indicator.

If none of those suit you, he has oddball import guitars that look nice enough.

Lotsa smoke and mirrors, sort of like Alice In Wonderland set in a Guitar Center.

He has the biggest guitar showroom in the world, with literally thousands of guitars.

He's entertaining, simply on a level of having no shame at all.

If you're ever in Las Vegas, visit his store - if it hasn't been closed down again......

 

I've heard it's possible to get a good deal there, but I've never seen anybody actually walk out with a guitar.

I don't know how he does it.

 

Better?

:-)

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#-o I actually liked the extended version better.

 

If you didn't know the author was Ed Roman my gut tells me this thread would be discussing the more salient points in the post. Where do you think the vintage guitar market is heading? What percentage of so-called vintage guitars are outright frauds? What's the risk/reward IQ of the market's particpants?

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I know the answer to none of those questions.

I don't have the resources to get myself involved, so I don't.

 

I buy what I can, sell what I don't use, and make it work for me.

I'm doing okay here in the small time.

 

It seems a little odd to think I have $50,000 in gear that fills two rooms. Looks pretty impressive.

Friends and coworkers come over and just stand there dumbstruck, knowing nothing about any of it.

I'm not a pro musician. Don't really play well at all. I would indeed fall into the collector category - but I'm not wealthy.

Crazy, huh?

 

So, if I sold everything I have for top dollar, I would still lose money.

 

Maybe I should sell everything and buy a real collectible, but what would $50,000 get now?

I'm waiting for the market to make a correction, simply for my own selfish interest - the reason I picked up my first guitar.

I buy what I like because I want to, try to get a good deal when I can, and don't lose any sleep over it.

Oh, they're all insured.

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OK, I actually went back and read the article, and since it wasn't authored by Roman it was actually intelligible and had some very good points.

 

While reading it I was thinking that the vintage / collectible guitar market is no different from any other commodity that has attained "vintage," "antique," or "collectible" status. Cars are a great example.

 

Once you enter the universe of collectibles, all the rules that apply to regular versions of those things go flying out the window and you are in a la-la land of pure speculation. Cars that win best of show in various concours d'elegance have had their provenance vetted many times over and are in most cases completely rebuilt and finished to standards that did not exist when the cars were originally built. These collectibles, be they cars, guitars, fountain pens, watches, whatever - they exist in a bubble of finite, diminishing supply and have an economy all their own. It may not be "fair" or even reasonable, but it is what it is.

 

It's a fact that I will never be willing to pony up the bucks for an actual 1958 LP or Strat. It's not the end of the world because there are many guitars in the world that are affordable and superior to many of the stratospherically-priced old dogs out there. (I hated the look on my friend's face when he compared the sound of his almost-100%-correct 1964 Strat to my $225 Xaviere XV-650 strat-like guitar, which is absolutely superior sonically.)

 

Moral of the story: If you want a guitar to play, buy one that you are willing to play and service and get some road wear on. If you want to speculate in vintage guitars, go right ahead. The two don't mix easily.

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Good job.

I think people forget that logic gets the funhouse mirror treatment when you get into something we don't need anyway.

 

Add some intangible value to something we WANT, and then all the circular rationalizing and justification begins.

 

Can you justify spending money on a guitar to begin with? Usually, no.

Can you justify spending more money for an American guitar?

Can you justify buying a Standard over a Studio? Reissue over a Standard? Signature anything?

Can you justify buying a guitar from the Custom Shop?

 

These are all new guitars with a fixed market value assigned by their maker, your deal at the dealer may vary.

Look at how much bullsh!t goes on just buying one of these!!!

 

Now, what is that old Les Paul Junior in the newspaper worth?

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I haven't even read the Cliff's Notes version and am just going by the title of this thread.

 

Although I wouldn't buy one personally, even if I had excessive amounts of cash lying around, I think they are worth it. Why?...because they're very old, rare and are a part of the history/heritage in which we all buy into every time we buy a new Gibson.

 

Besides, they have to be valuable. If an old rare Gibson Les Paul isn't worth anything, then what would that say about all our modern guitars?

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Besides' date=' they have to be valuable. If an old rare Gibson Les Paul isn't worth anything, then what would that say about all our modern guitars? [/quote']

With all due respect, Tim, this makes absolutely no sense.

 

You rely on the value of a 40-year-old instrument, which was made with many different manufacturing technologies and techniques, to determine the extrinsic value of a modern instrument? How does that work?

 

Slightly off the subject, but every time I go cruising through the nearby antique mall, I am amazed that a 100-year old tiger oak English armoire can be bought for about $500, when anything made similarly today would likely cost $3,000. How does that work?

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Damn right!

I have a few antiques myself.

And I bought 'em in Texas!

I swear, there must have been about 80 bazillion armoires made in England in the last couple of hundred years, and we ended up with half of 'em here in Texas.

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With all due respect' date=' Tim, this makes absolutely no sense.

 

You rely on the value of a 40-year-old instrument, which was made with many different manufacturing technologies and techniques, to determine the extrinsic value of a modern instrument? How does that work? [/quote']

It makes perfect sense.

 

So, you're telling me that if Gibson produced complete crap for 50 (or even 100) years straight and all of those guitars were basically worthless today, that a new Gibson could sell for $5,000+? Get real.

 

I'm not talking about bad years or periods here or there, but for the entire life of the company...just pure crap.

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ive kinda been catching up on this whole post

some guy who's personality is bigger then eddie van halens ego, ranting abot the vintage guitar market, disrespecting neocon man, who says vintage guitars play and sound the same as new guitars, and that arnt worth as much because most have been modded and arnt stock, which effects the price.

 

time for my 2 cents, for as much as i would sell my soul to even play a vintage 59 it dosent matter, your better off buying a R9, and dont worry about what happens to it becuase if it ever becomes a collectible, then some fat bald guy with no kids, a mansion and a rare painting collection will buy it, put it in a safe and wait till the sky starts to fall before he sells it @ a 70% loss

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Slightly off the subject' date=' but every time I go cruising through the nearby antique mall, I am amazed that a 100-year old tiger oak English armoire can be bought for about $500, when anything made similarly today would likely cost $3,000. How does that work? [/quote']

 

When I was in my late teens I used to go to the local Goodwill and pickup three hardcovers for $1. Just for the sake of reading the classics. Today I have quite a few books that are well over a hundred years old, first edition of a Mark Twain, autographed copy of Somerset Maugham, etc... but it turns out the vast majority of them are near worthless. Age doesn't stand for much.

 

I guess I am reflecting on the fact that evrything has a "vintage" attribute thrown on it primarily because of it's age.

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Who the hell is this guy?

Is he for real?

The jury is still out on some of these....

Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and an honest woman.

 

But trust me, Ed Roman is real.

Seen him with my own eyes, tried to have a conversation with him twice.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

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The jury is still out on some of these....

Santa Claus' date=' the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and an honest woman.

 

But trust me, Ed Roman is real.

Seen him with my own eyes, tried to have a conversation with him twice.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. [/quote']

 

So he's just some guy who runs a website and rips on guitars?

should I know about him, is he famous for something?

From what I've read I don't think I like him.

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The dealers want to manipulate the market to their advantage.... I have had very good luck on Ebay, at least there you see what the market will bring for any given guitar.... With the economy being the way it is now many great guitars are selling at very good prices. Many of the higher priced, highly sought after guitar get zero bids or don't meet their reserve and you see the same guitars coming back on line for sale. If you have the money in your pocket and really want that special guitar you have always dreamed about getting now is the time to go after it. Just be patient, research the seller and guitar, don't get the forst one that comes along, unless its really special and a great price.... There are hundreds of guitars for sale just like the one you want... another one will come on line soon just as good, if not better...

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I've spent dozens of hours searching Ebays "Vintage Guitars" selections.

 

I've come to the conclusion that on Ebay, Vintage = damaged junk that may or may not be repairable.

 

I'm sure that some of the better guitar shoppes sell REAL: vintage stuff, in good condition, but worth the asking prices? All depends on what you want I guess.

I'm personally looking really closely at the new ES 339 as my next purchase.

Vintage sound,Vintage look, Top Quality (Gibson Custom Shop), smaller package.

 

I'm sure this guitar will catch on really well....and a few yrs from now, we'll see the ones that have been abused, selling on Ebay for 3-4x what they cost new.

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