50's ES-125TD

[6L6]

I'm sick at having lost out on a very nice '57 ES-125TD yesterday. I waited because I thought maybe $2150 plus 8.5% sales tax (CA) was too much to pay for one. Someone else thought otherwise and grabbed it up.

 

I have the feeling that was a fair price (definitely not Mint condition, but all frets were good and I would label as being in very good condition), especially since it played great and sounded incredible.

 

What do you folks think about the price and how long until I find another one? It seems the single pup ES-125T's are readily avaialble, but thats the first two pup 50's model I've seen in years.

 

6

[Ignatius]

Hey 6L6--

 

I just ran a quick search at gbase.com, and I found six ES-125TDs available right now. That seems to suggest that they are fairly readily available. The prices at gbase are all either at the price you saw or higher, which suggests to me that the price you saw is the high end of fair (because gbase ads typically are overpriced by a good margin in my experience). On top of that, all the guitars at gbase are being sold as "excellent" or "very good." I am suspecting you may be overstating the quality of the one you saw because you say it wasn't mint, but I am wondering if by mint, you actually mean very good: mint means that a guitar has the exact same appearance and quality of a brand-new guitar that has not even been handled on the sales floor. Most of the NEW guitars at Guitar Center are NOT mint; they are often "excellent" or "very good" at best, so if this guitar looks more like the vintage guitars on sale at your local used guitar dealer, then the guitar you saw would be good to very good at best. This is a long way of saying that you should NOT pay "mint," "near-mint," or "excellent" prices for a "good" guitar. Your dealer seems to be selling at "very good" or "excellent." Be sure the guitar was that before you think you missed on a good deal.

 

I would say you could do better, and you might start by going to gbase.com to see if any of the dealers are in your area and then go to wheel and deal.

 

By the way, here is a link to an ebay sale (I have no connection to this; I just ran an internet search to see what I could find): ES-125TD on eBay. The seller calls this guitar "exceptionally fine" and "like new." I call that a joke of a description. If you can see this much wear and tarnish on a guitar, this is a "good" to "very good" at best (although I am impressed that it has almost all the original hardware: even the tuning machines are original as far as I can see).

 

Notice that the bidding starts at $1000, and after three days on the auction, there is not a single bid yet. That suggests that the market is not finding the price all that attractive so the price you saw clearly looks overpriced in comparison. OTOH, you may want to watch this sale and drop a grand or so on it near the end just to see if you can win it for a LOT less than you were going to pay. My only concern is that the guitar has been unplayed for a long time; it will definitely need a good set up and may need some electrical work. Email the seller with lots of questions, and get him to confirm a return policy before you act, though.

 

Ignatius

[6L6]

Ignatius: Thanks so much for your keen insight into the ES-125TD. Will follow up accodingly!

 

Just LOVE the tone these guitars deliver, albeit at low volume only.

 

There seems to be a LOT of single pickup 50's es-125T's for sale, but the dual pup models are harder to find.

 

Cheers.

 

6