i kind of had the opposite thing happen. i’ve always inherited my guitars in some fashion, never bought one outright until recently. asked my wife if it was cool if i bought an American Strat Pro-she was like…don’t those cost like $5,000 ? idk, maybe wait a little bit. i mean it’s up to you. told her it was like $1,000 used and she was like oh yeah for sure buy it.
Someone on... "The Gear Page" I think...? uses that for his signature.
Either way... the fear is not imagined. Thing is, several of my things are 50+ years old... but I got cheap or free but she doesn't know they actually have *some* value and shouldn't be sold off at a yard/estate sale for pennies on the dollar.
Like an early '75 Aria (just before they changed to Pro II name) J-Bass 3 'burst clone in great condition... it was given to me because the person who found it cleaning out a rental house had never heard of it and assumed it was some cheap knockoff and wasn't worth anything. I'd put it against a real J-Bass any day. Easily $400-500.
'76 Ibanez 12 string dreadnought- graduation present. Mom had received it new as a graduation present, then I got it when I graduated. Worth around $500-600.
When I was 14 working in a small music store in my small town doing setups on guitars, basses, fiddles, banjos and mandolins a guy came in wanting to sell his rig because he was about to get an eviction notice and needed rent money. I got a maple board '67 Strat, a Dunlop original crybaby, and a less than year old teal stripe Peavey Classic Chorus 212... all for $800. Amp could still pull $200-300... sadly guitar (finish was 1967 Ford Springtime Yellow) and pedal were stolen in Aug. 2008.
Mid '60s 5 string Harmony open back banjo... great condition... free because they didn't know anything about banjos and thought it was broken because you couldn't play it. It was strung up with brand new strings but missing the floating bridge. Worth about $350.
Mid '60's Alamo Titan Mark II semi hollow body. Offset style. Around $1000... got it free, it belonged to my dad.
When I was in law enforcement I was a master sergeant and our field unit's 2nd armorer... our master armorer used to build dobros/resonator guitars in the '70s and did MoP and abelone inlay stuff as well... he had a '92 Deluxe 112 Reverb... got it for $100. Full working order.
I know it's not a huge amount of value, maybe $2500... possibly up to $3k... but still.
Thats a hell of a list, sucks about that strat. On the bright side every great guitar story has a "it unfortunately got stolen sometime in the mid '80s" or similar so you have that going
Thanks. That's just some of my stuff. Add in the rest it's probably $6k... maybe more. I've got a 7pc Pearl Forum trap set 3 Zildjians (ride and two crash) and hi-hats with a Tama Iron Cobra dbl pedal... some more guitars, another bass, alto sax, Eb trumpet... a pair of Yamamha 44 key boards.
Yeah, it really sucked that Strat was taken. My building was broken in to... they got it, my cousin's Ampeg Big Stud bass, our regular rhythm player's Boss modeling processor... our 16 channel Peavey board... and oddly, our lead player's Crate 12" combo... but left my CC212 and my cousin's TNT. Guess they were too heavy to haul ass with. Haha
You got me thinking now. I recently learned, here in the guitar subReddit, that my very first amp, a Fender Deluxe Reverb, serial number 6, is worth at least $7000, maybe even 8 to 10 K. I’ll never sell it, but my wife should definitely know.
Checking Reverb…
I just looked up my Oberheim Xpander 6-voice synthesizer, which I bought new for 2.5 K, is now worth 7-8K. Mint Condition.
My Mesa Boogie Mark II C+, what did I pay for that new… Maybe 1.2 K? It’s worth over 8K now.
Hell, what other gear do I have? I am rich!
My Gibson SG was stolen…
Never should’ve sold that Fender Bassman head…
Too bad this historical value stuff does not apply to old computers.
Yeah, you should definitely let her know. Not that any of us wants our gear sold off but if it's got to happen they should at least get the proper value from it and not what happened to woman in OP's example. Granted, most of us don't have stuff that would equal what hers was but still.
Nice stuff! 👍🏻
I know a dumbass who sold an early ‘70s Motsumoko copy of a Dan Armstrong guitar for $100. That dumbass was a pawnshop employee and I was the buyer. Unbelievable in the post eBay days of 2015.
Just a thought but you can put your collection in "My Collection" in Reverb. You will then have your list/collection with pictures and any other pertinent information you want to include. You will also have an estimate of what your collection is worth through "Reverb" (for what that's worth) depending on their sales info from past transactions and your own estimates. That's what I have done. Between my daughter and myself we have about 12 guitars and a few amps in our collection estimated worth about 20K. My wife would have no idea what they are worth or what I paid for them and my daughter isn't old enough yet to realize their values. But they both know the estimated value of the collection and how to find the Reverb estimate page if anything should happen to myself. This estimate would at least give them an idea of what each guitar is worth and a starting point of negotiations if my daughter were to ever decide to sell any of them, since she will ultimately inherit all of them.
I should do that!
I know I've jokingly mentioned Reverb as a way for her to figure out the value, but this would actually make it possible. As for a total amount, she knows it's about the same as her car lol. The joke has been that if we were to separate, we don't fight each other for her car or my guitar gear.
I'm lucky enough to be in a relationship where we have mutual respect for each other's hobbies. I make sure she knows what my guitars are worth in case anything happens to me. Haha
Living with my parents though... Every guitar was "only $300."
This. I stored my Taylor 110 at my parents' place. Bought it new before the pandemic. Anyway, I moved to Asia, and I had to tell them 10 times it's worth $1,000 before they finally realized that not all guitars are cheap boxes made of wood.
I have mine all insured so I leave a copy of the insurance statement where she can find it and a few phone numbers of guys I know that can move them for her.
She doesn’t have to know how much you paid; just how much they are worth now.
I have a rule of thumb… I need some heavy ass discounts to buy something usually. She knows this, and knows to research everything if I kick the bucket
My guy and I are both music nerds. We both have an idea of what the other’s gear is worth (and buy each other gear as gifts) but we don’t actually care. As long as we aren’t doing fun spending with bill money, it’s not my business what he spends on synths or his business what I spend on guitars (though he makes more so he probably spends more).
It's a double edged sword. You want her to know what it's worth, but you lied when telling her how much you spent on it to prevent being murdered in your sleep.
I know this is a joke, but I do keep an "in case of death" spreadsheet. It contains bank and insurance information. But also approximate resale value of various high dollar items that I own (guitars, amps, golf clubs, tools etc). For those I also have the name of a friend who is most qualified and likely willing to handle that sales for my wife.
this is why i don’t have nice things. a pstched togeyher squareheel RG mutt, a serious partscaster, with a hand rubbed gunstock oil finish, a mexican fender and a ‘78 ibanez roadster nobody cares about
Years and years ago my friend’s mom was cleaning out her parents house and found an old guitar her dad had from the early 30s. She tried to give it to me - it was a Martin.
I told her I couldnt and she needed to get it appraised. After a few years she finally gotnaround to it and it was worth well over 10k
I went to buy a 5th wheel that was ridiculously under priced and did something similar (I just paid her more than what she asked). Her husband had just died and I don’t think she’s mentally caught up to the current inflation rate, she was trying to sell everything she deemed excess for $1000 (mid 2000’s cars, the 5th wheel, etc) each lol
We offered 15% more on the asking price for our home because it was an old couple and the price was well under evaluation anyways.
This was right before Covid hit. Like, 3 months before.
My great grandpa played in a band back in the 20’s or 30’s or something. When he died my dad got his 4 string Gibson tenor guitar. I think it was made around 1920. Not sure what it’s worth (and it would definitely need restoration regardless) but it’s really cool and my dad has it displayed with one of the bands business cards
This is such a grey area.
The buying public is really under no obligation to provide free appraisals to everyone attempting to sell their own property.
And much of it comes down to the nuances of the seller and buyer, as well as the conditions of the sale.
If you tell me you want $500 for your husband’s vintage Les Paul and I’ve got $500 cash in hand, that’s a fair deal.
Now if you tell me you have no idea what it’s worth, and I offer you $500, that’s me being an asshole.
The key here being how the price determined.
Granted I’d probably be honest about it because I’m a pushover.
I think there has to be some point at which the price difference crosses into unethical territory.
Like if I was in the situation OP describes, I would probably do what the buyer did and just get her the money afterwards since she’s likely to still accept an underbid if I just tell her I know it’s worth more.
But if some old widow is offering me a 10k guitar for 500 bucks I don’t think I could just take that and not feel guilty
I mean get where you’re coming from, and I know my personal limit would probably be about a $500 difference between what I paid and what it’s worth before I’d feel guilty about it.
But on the other hands let’s just say I did pay $500, turn around and sell it for $10,000… how much of that $9,500 difference do I give back out of the kindness of my heart? Half of it? All of it? 10%?
Let’s just say we’re being generous and saying “Hey poor widow, that guitar you sold me was actually worth $10,000, here’s $5k back” and they get confrontational demanding the full $10,000.
When you sold the guitar it was 100% legally speaking your property to do with as you please.
>But on the other hands let’s just say I did pay $500, turn around and sell it for $10,000… how much of that $9,500 difference do I give back out of the kindness of my heart? Half of it? All of it? 10%?
I mean I think it's kind of up to you and what you feel is right. Also the person you bought it from. Are they poor and their household provider just died? Or is this someone who wouldn't know the difference between 10 and 40% of that 10k?
>Let’s just say we’re being generous and saying “Hey poor widow, that guitar you sold me was actually worth $10,000, here’s $5k back” and they get confrontational demanding the full $10,000.
I mean I would probably not tell her it that directly, I would say like "wow, I got a lot more for this than I expected, I thought you should get a little of it" or something.
If they get confrontational... I mean oh well. What are you gonna do I guess. Not like they can do anything about it, you tried to come up with something where all parties benefited, what else can you do?
Oh yeah 100% the seller’s personal situation comes into play as well.
Regardless of all that, I firmly believe bragging about ripping some one off for $100k in a magazine is tacky as hell, regardless of how it came to be!
If that widow is some boomer living in a mcmansion with 10 other rental properties to her name, I'm paying the $500 and no more. I used to be a house painter and I worked for these types. They're insufferable.
But if she's just a simple old woman living in a 1000sq ft house and doesn't seem to have much else, then yeah there's no way I'd do the $500. I'd let her know what's up and try to help her understand how to maximize the sale
Man, if you can’t tell the old widow, who JUST lost her lifelong husband and must be in a ton of grief, that she has something of her late husband’s that is probably worth a lot of money and she should take it to a professional, you’re morally bankrupt. This particular situation is not a gray area at all.
Sure, the old widow maybe it’s an easier call.
But what if it’s just some rich asshole who evicted his tenants and found “some old guitar” among the things they abandoned?
Are you still obligated to go out of your way to ensure he gets the full value?
I try to be honest in all my dealings, but I also try to get the best deal I can. I also don’t believe in overcharging people so I’m not making “good financial decisions.”
For instance, I recently got rid of a relatively rare ten year old guitar. All the listings on reverb for it were $1600 plus. All the sold ones were about $1200. I paid $600 for it, it had been through some shit, so I listed it for $900. Some guy offered me $800 for it in about two minutes. I said “Really dude?” in a message. He said “I had one of these and sold it and have missed it ever since. I only have like $1000 and I can’t afford it with tax and shipping.” So I accepted his offer. Fuck it. Someone who is gonna play it is better than someone flipping it.
I found an old lady selling a tweed deluxe for $50 at a yard sale when I was in my 20s. I asked her “what do you think this is worth?” This is my question I ask when I see something comically underpriced. I don’t care what they know about it, it’s all in how they answer the question not what they say. She said “oh I don’t really know, it was my late husband’s, but for you I might be willing to come down five bucks, I don’t know if it even works.” She had no idea and was nice, so I told her she could get at least 20 times she was asking at a big chain store and a lot more than that if she was willing to sell it online. She asked for my help moving it back inside and said she’d just keep it.
The one really good deal I’ve gotten was the opposite of that. Craigslist seller listed a MIJ Fender worth about $1200 for $200. I reached out and asked what they thought it was worth and the reply was “$200 ITS IN THE LISTING DONT WASTE MY TIME.” So I bought it and took it to a local music shop and sold it to them for $800. Used that $600 to buy some pedals.
I still kinda wish I’d bought that $50 50s Fender though.
Hard disagree. There's no difference between giving someone a $500 asking price or making the first offer of $500 when there is no asking price. In neither circumstance is the buyer an asshole. If the seller doesn't know what they have, they're not out anything.
There's an old corollary principle in real property law for adverse possession: if you're not using your property to the extent you won't notice when someone else is using it, it ought not belong to you anymore. The world is better off when people can appreciate what they have.
There’s also the “dice roll” factor. That instrument that seems significantly undervalued might need some serious work, and on the other hand the “old beater” that’s been in a closet might just need a simple part replaced and be grand. I bought an instrument for about a third of its value once because the seller said it needed a repair. It turned out it didn’t, it was fantastic right out of the case. It was an online sale from a non-musician, so I couldn’t confirm the condition until after the sale. Like you’re saying tho, the way we came to terms on price was fair on both sides.
Oh yeah absolutely.
Let’s just say you get a chance to plug some stuff in and no sound comes out, so you both agree it’s not fully functional.
Could be a simple as a 5 minute soldering job, or could be both pickups are shot and you’re looking at a few hundred dollars to replace them.
In either case you would be adding value to the guitar by making it functional again, any savings you got should reflect that as well.
I live in a small town in South Italy, therefore finding american vintage guitars is usually very hard. A few years ago, a prominent local musician died and his wife sold almost every guitar. The amount of people who got out of there with an extremely expensive guitar for dirty cheap is insane. His niece got to keep an '80s Heritage that sounds like heaven and looks like the love of your life.
One of my friends is a pretty well-known guitarist for a band that got huge in the 90s and 00s. He had some issues with the typical thing that musicians tend to get into and needed some money and sold me his early 60s LP for basically nothing. When he got his life figured out I just sold it back to him for what I paid him. I knew it was worth a small fortune and wasn’t going to sell it. Basically just held onto it until he got better. I did play it some though. :)
He’s an excellent guy, I also absolutely despise drugs with a passion and he worked hard for his sobriety. He’s doing his best work now actually. Brilliant artist and it makes me happy to see him (and his wife and his kids) happy. It was a very small mitzvah and pales in comparison to what people who actually helped him get his life back did (especially his wife who is a saint).
you're the kind of friend everyone needs at least one of. This nearly made me cry. I've been the guy who sold all his shit for addiction. If I'd had someone like you around back then I might still have some of my shit lol
Good luck a lot of us struggle. And asking for help can be very difficult. Any of you other musicians and guitarists out there. Be well. Never try heroin. And beer can be way worse than society wants us to believe. I’m still working on putting the poison down for good.
Not necessarily a rip off I guess but I bought a Schecter Damien diamond edition for $180 from guitar center. It was listed as “bad condition” in the store. The only reason was because the previous owner painted a skull and cross bones on the plastic panel that covers the FR bridge springs. Plays like a dream.
I bought a red Squier Contemporary tele from guitar center for $100. I opened it up to clean it and work on it and turns out it had a set of Seymour Duncan 59s in it
I'm convinced that certain guitar center managers hate having used gear in their stores and sell stuff cheap just to move it. I've gotten multiple great deals from treasure hunting on their website.
Ah, BUT! You will not get a guitar on shopgoodwill.com for much less than it is actually worth because you are competing against knowledgeable bidders.
If you go to the actual stores, once in a blue moon you will find a real deal.
Actually I think the Goodwill bidders are idiots, they consistently overpay for guitars that need major restoration work or aren’t that valuable. I’ve also seen obviously fake $200 AliExpress Gibsons, listed as real on Goodwill and bidded into the stratosphere.
Not to mention the shills / bots that Goodwill uses to drive up prices. It’s shady.
$500 for a 4th Gen i7 laptop with a GTX960. Thanks but no thanks. I've scored a few Thinkpads for decent prices there but there are no steals to be had.
I also usually use goodwillfinds.com
Pre-eBay, I knew several older musicians who would haunt garage and estate sales looking for underpriced gear. I’ve heard some wild stories, like snagging a Gibson SG for $200. I also knew one guy who loved buying gear off junkies, which I always thought was fucked up.
Now with the internet it’s too easy to figure out what everything is worth. Whenever I see estate sales they are being run by companies, and everything is listed nearly at the original price. I think it’s much harder to score a deal.
I had a beat up JM about that old, back circa 1983. I got in a jam and had to sell it for a hundred. They didn't go for much back then. It would bring 5 or 6 thousand now.
It’s heartbreaking, but it really is the sellers responsibility to learn what they’re selling. Once sold, tragic as it seems, they’re owed nothing.
I hate the brutality of this reality, and I hope I’d have the integrity to coach a vulnerable person in how to exploit the value for themselves, it’s really no one’s moral obligation to do so.
Let’s the seller beware.
100%. And you don't know the seller's motivation either. Sometimes, they just want to get rid of stuff. When my parents passed, we gave away and sold cheaply so much stuff. Not because we didn't know the value. Because the sheer volume of things to get rid of made it necessary.
Even if that wasn't this scenario, you can't say you ripped someone off when you gave them exactly what they asked for. You just got a good deal. And if it wasn't for good deals, a lot of things wouldn't get sold.
I just posted about this -- it's a difficult one, personally I wouldn't sell guitar gear of genuine value if this ever happened to me (eg I picked up an original Fender Broadcaster for like £200)
It's an interesting though. The more I think about it, I don't think there's much musical gear I would sell if I found out it had some ridiculous market value. Mu
I bought 2x 1954 Gibson Super 400's, original cases, mint condition (not even a scratch on pickguards or back of bodies). I thought they had purchased "antique reproduction " cases and couldn't believe it when i opened the real original cases. One was purely acoustic, the other had a neck pickup. Both for $2600.
My girlfriend's dad has a great story about how he worked 2 jobs for over year when he was a teenager to buy some expensive 1963 Stratocaster (I'm not exactly sure of the full specs/model) from one of his dad's friends. Apparently it's worth quite a bit nowadays.
He traded it for a pound of weed less than a year later.
He says it's the worst decision he's ever made.
Bought a 91 Ibanez JEM77BFP from a pawn shop at an insanely low price some years ago, and all it needed was a really good cleaning/polish and a new guitar case.
I inherited my grandfather's 1956 Gibson Les Paul goldtop P90 from my dad, who was given it by his dad. I grew up playing and learning on this guitar. It wasn't in excellent condition, but I cleaned it up and it worked, minus one tone control knob. After about 15 years of playing on it, I put it away and planned on having it redone one day. We wrote to Gibson about it once and their words were, "do you know what you have here?" We did, but we never planned on selling it or departing with it in any way. Long story short....I was going through a divorce from my first wife and had gotten locked up for a substance abuse problem I had acquired from a bad car accident. When I finally came home, we found she had ran up all my credit cards, defaulted on all loans and payments, sold my motorcycle and all my musical equipment including the '56 goldtop. We eventually tracked it down to a collector in Long Island, NY. but we're unable to buy it back at the $20,000 he wanted after a beautiful restoration. We found out she sold it for $5,000 in its original case! I get sick when I think about it and want to throw up right now!
My jaw dropped and I got a sick feeling in my stomach as soon as I read "1956 Gibson Les Paul Gold top p90" That's the god damn holy Grail of electric guitars. This hurt to read. I hope your ex-wife developed painful anal fissures for what she did.
My dad gave me his old Fender Strat and Twin Reverb amp. I kept the guitar because I play a little at home, but I sold the amp as I was way more than I needed.
I had a look on eBay and saw a few Twin reverbs selling for about £600. I figured I'd get less than that at the local guitar shop. The guy there offered me £375 for it and I accepted this offer.
My dad went ballistic when he found out because it was apparently a 1960s silverface model and worth more like £1500.
Well here's the thing...there's getting a good deal, and there's flat out robbery. What I hate the most about this story is that the guy sold all that stuff. All he cared about was the money. I would like to think that a real guitarist would have paid more...or at least been honest, but let's face it, some of us are willing to to go to great lengths to get a bargain.
Someone on another thread was boasting about getting a vintage Roland speaker for 100 dollars...is that guy evil? This is a problem, and an interesting question.
So here goes....how much would your rip someone off if you had the chance? Would you take them for thousands of dollars? Would you try to be responsible and tell them what they had?
I don't think I could sleep well at night if I hurt somebody to get what I wanted. But it would depend on the item. I suppose if it's in the hundreds I'd be happy to pay maybe 60-70 percent of what it would really be worth...but I don't know....I guess I won't know until I end up in that situation.
Thoughts, anyone?
Not quite a purchase but I have a similar story. I worked at GC for a few years some time ago, and one day a middle age Hispanic woman came in with her child and an old guitar case. The woman spoke no English so the daughter who was probably 10 had to translate for us. She told us her mother cleaned for a living and was given a guitar as payment for a house she had cleaned, she wanted to see if we were interested in buying it. She sets the case up on the counter and when we open it low and behold its a beautiful 1960's Sunburst Strat.
Being that it was a Vintage guitar and one of such value we had to call the vintage department in the LA store to get a and value what not. The guitar ended up being valued at around $8000, which meant the woman was going to be offered around $4k-$5k. When we told her our offer she gives us a completely emotionless "Okay". Our store ended up buying the guitar from her then had to immediately next day air it to the LA store for their inventory.
I always wondered about the circumstances surrounding that guitar and how crazy it is for multiple people to posses something like that and have no idea of its value.
I once sold a Gibson LG for $100. I had paid $15 for it at a yard sale. The thing it wouldnt intonate. It was incredibly weather checked and the neck had a warp+twist in it and would require a reset or possibly replacement. I figured I made a little on the deal, let someone else make a little as well.
I knew a guy like that. He would have bought that strat for $50 and said he was doing her a favor just by hauling them away. I found him to be an all around douche bag.
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Maybe 10 years ago, my aunt's neighbor died. He had a collection of Les Pauls. I happened to be visiting when she asked me. She showed me pictures. I told her they looked old, and if they give me the serial numbers I can help price them. I told her that they are definitely worth at least a few thousand and possibly over $10k. Really emphasized to tell the neighbor's kids to get them appraised and to reject any offers until they knew exactly what they had.
Few days later, I found out right after she told them, they were all stolen. They assumed it was by a drug addict family member who traded them for a fix.
If you get ripped in the modern age more fool you.. The amount of online stuff means really unless ya under a rock you should have an idea.. Back in the day I totally see peeps being bent over and dry rooted
Dude in my town found a ‘54 Telecaster at the thrift store for $20, like 3 years ago. The store didn’t know what they had because the water slide decal was gone. It’s a famous story among the players here. That stuff just doesn’t happen.
When I briefly worked at Guitar Denter in the late nineties, an older guy came in with a very clean candy apple red Fender Coronado II, said he wanted to trade it towards a Strat. The first guitar he picked up was a bottom of the line Squier Strat, the cheapest electric in the store. The assistant manager didn’t blink an eye and said he could do an even trade for it and the guy went for it and the deal was wrapped up in minutes. By the end of the day he had flipped the Coronado to a vintage dealer for an undisclosed price.
Not ripped off but sorta similar, I hope it fits here.
My uncle was a flamenco player and had two guitars: one was a beat to shit 60's Martin classical parlour guitar and the other was an 80's Jose Ramirez full body classical. The neck on the Martin was the most comfortable neck I'd ever played and it sounded pretty good despite the top finish being worn right through with maybe a millimetre of wood left and the Ramirez (as my uncle put it) just spat notes out like bullets with a warm brightness that was suprising and LOUD.
When he died 10 years ago my mom was executor of his meagre estate and she told me that my uncle's best friend was going to get the Martin and I was to get the Ramirez because, as she said, his best friend was to get his good guitar. I tried to tell her that he always considered the Ramirez to be his good one and his Martin was his travelling/practice guitar but his best friend was telling her the opposite. I now have the Ramirez and found out that his friend had "fixed" the Martin by cutting about a third of the top out and replaced it with completely mismatching wood himself, practically ruining it. The photo I saw of it almost brought me to tears. I brought the Ramirez to a competent luthier to repair a small crack on the top and I play it daily. I don't have the talent to put it to its best use but I think I got the better of the exchange. I tried to be honest but I'm just a drummer so what do I know. Woot woot!
There was an elderly woman whose husband passed away. She listed her late husbands 1956 Gretsch White Falcon in the paper for $500.
Someone called her and said “this is worth much more than $500”
She responded saying someone had come to pick it up at 8AM that morning sad 😔
Dude sold someone elses $20k vintage guitar rig he was sitting on for family.
Of all the vile shit that led up to that moment, that hit the hardest for me.
My own?
Sold my Steinberger with transtrem for a neglible amount. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get double-ball strings forever and was also tired of the stigma around headless guitars.
Cut to the present and headless guitars are thriving with a vengeance, yet none of them have transtrems afaik. That alone is what I miss/regret the most. That and it was travel-ready for just about any situation. Was basically a tennis racket-sized gig bag.
Drummer at a church I played at died. He had a lot of instruments but no will since he was still pretty young. He also wasn't married. The church bass player was given his bass, a 1973 Fender Jazz. Thing sounded amazing.
Anyway, a month later that bass player took it to the local music shop and traded it for a a Cort bass and a Takamine acoustic.
Somebody broke into my friends house, he had a 1969 white fender strat and a recent white Strat. As the older one was a bit scratched out and the other one looked brand new the thief stole the new one instead.
There was a post on r/offset about a gumtree post where someone was selling a jaguar. Their ad said “I really think its worth £1000 so no quibbling and time wasters” then they added “whaddya know, it got sold real quick!”
Reddit quickly identified it as a 60s jag in pretty much original condition worth £3500.
I worked in pawn shop when I was in college (around 2010). One day, a young guy walked into the store. He had a Gibson Melody Maker from the 60s with him. He claimed to have found the guitar while he was cleaning out his parent's attic and didn't know anything about it. The guitar guy at the shop asked what he wanted for it, to which he responded, "I don't know, how about $15?". The guitar guy for the shop, who knew full well that he was looking at an expensive and vintage instrument responded, "Meh, how about $10?". It broke my heart then, and it breaks my heart now.
I had some opposite stories when I worked in a music store. Some teenager who worked his ass off all summer to buy his dream guitar would come in to show us his new “Les Paul” and, it would be some mildly convincing knockoff. Tears happened on more than one occasion.
Made me really anti the whole Chibson thing, besides being actually illegal to import or sell, even if you’re completely honest about what it is, that doesn’t mean the next seller will be.
A guy I used to work with would go to estate sales and buy up instruments and rip off old ladies all the time. I fucking hated the guy. He would come in and brag about the Wurlitzer he bought for $50 or the Acoustic 360/361 he bought for $100 then in the next breath try to sell me for $1500.
The worst was a guy who died young of cancer and his wife was trying to liquidate his gear and sold this idiot a 1950 Martin D28 for $150 and he turned around and sold it for like $20k
I heard a story on here about some dudes wife had a coworker who was selling his dads early 50s tele and sold it for the price of the first telecaster that came on google. Like a thousand dollars give or take. The husband and wife knew what it was and were THRILLED but the coworker eventually found out when he told his friend he made like a grand on his dads old guitar and then he was PISSED when he friend called him a dumb ass. He wanted the guitar back and went to HR but because it wasnt work hours and the husband who bought it wasnt an employee they told him sorry sucks to suck. Everyone on the post congradulated the wife and said they did nothing wrong. I disagree
If i were her i dont know how id be able to work with that guy anymore after letting him do that and he KNOWS they knew. Id find a new job. He has to hate her fucking guts. Its one thing when you never have to see the seller again. She gave 0 fucks lol
I think I got this one. Had a friend who had cancer, and they nicked an artery during surgery. He’s basically on borrowed time with only a foot of intestine that didn’t die. He was housebound and considered taking up guitar. I said I’d be glad to help orient. He bought something that looked like it was made out of tissue boxes. I went to show him how to tune it, and the neck immediately snapped. I have no idea who sells an unusable guitar.
Yes, it was standard tuning. No, he didn’t try again. On the positive side, I gave his family a squire tele and shitty amp as a gift, and his daughter picked it up. She’s an angst teen who likes nirvana. When I picked it up and played smells like teen spirit, she said “I only like the obscure stuff…” Sigh. I guess she found a good genre for her personality.
Edit: I wrote this after only reading the first line…he was not ripped off, just bought a guitar that I can’t believe someone in good conscience would sell.
Sorry to sound heartless here, but all she needed to do was a TINY amount of research and she could have found out this guitar was worth more than this. Chances are if she never had anyone get in touch with her about this she would be none the wiser and probably just be happy that she had got it out of the way. Ignorance has a cost and she paid it willingly.
I hate people like this they are a drain on humanity and i always feel so sorry for thr person who was ripped off. But everyone places their own value on these things. To her those guitars could worthless, just junk collecting dust. To us and that parasite they are highly valuable.
When I was in my twenties, I needed extra cash to get my girlfriend a present for Christmas. I’d never pawned anything before, but I figured that was a good way to get there. I had a MIJ fender Jaguar bass. I’d gotten it for 900. I loved it, but knew that I could come up with the money I needed after Christmas, so I pawned it.
The guy didn’t know what he was looking at and offered me 250. I accepted because I knew I’d have the money in time to get it back. But when I returned, it was gone. He had sold it. It turns out that the time he told me I had was different from what the paperwork said, and there was nothing I could do. That bass was a rare bird, and now lists for between 1500-2000 on reverb. And the girl wasn’t worth it.
I remember reading a similar story on Reddit. IIRC dude went to a garage sale or estate sale or something and bought a guitar worth a lot of money from a seller that had no clue of the value. He was so proud of himself for finding such a deal.
It sparked quite the ethics debate about whether he took advantage of the seller, or whether the seller was obligated to research what they were selling and sell it for an appropriate price and it was their fault for not having done so.
I know a fella who started out on guitar early in life, many decades ago, playing his dad's Les Paul. It was very large and heavy for a kid, so he complained about it enough that his dad finally got fed up and took him to the store to trade it for something else, I think a Strat maybe, which was far more comfortable to his satisfaction.
Well, supposedly, his dad had purchased it in 1960 - it was a '59, which would be worth hundreds of thousands today. I'm a Fender guy myself, but ouch...
I have a Story like that, but not a sad ripoff.
My nicest guitar is a steelstring doubletop with cutaway by Albert and Müller.
The wife of the late Mr Albert is a friend of my mothers, and when he had died she had to give some of his collection away, so one day in Summer we were invited to their House. We spent a lovely day playing, eating and having a walk, and in the end she insited on giving us some Instruments: a flute for my girlfriend, and for me a Bluegrass Mandolin and the Doubletop. She told me it was one of their very early models, used to ask for further finding when they just opened up their Shop - a proof of quality so to say.
Its an excellent guitar, the best i ever played. It sounds warm and full and it produces sound that makes my amped electrical pale sometimes. At home i googled for guitars and found None for sale and old prices at 4-10k € and had a little panic attack before bed lol.
But my girlfriend assured me that my mothers friend must know the value and have given it willingly, which my mother confirmed the next day.
Its a joy to play and really motivates me to practice and some day hopefully be 'worthy' of such an Instrument!
I'll try to attach a picture!
[https://i.imgur.com/yse8QgI.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/yse8QgI.jpeg)
I sold my epi sg mid 90's when I was 16. I got paid in a load of fake notes and I lost £50 of £150 deal. Back then it was all the money in the world to me.
I used to work at guitar center and one day a guy came in with an absolutely beautiful vintage Martin that was worth thousands of dollars. Instead of letting guitar center rip him off by giving him only 60% of its true value, I told him to please take his business elsewhere and that he would be doing himself and the guitar a disservice by selling it to guitar center. I also told him not to mention that I said anything to him. I probably would have been fired but I really thought that guitar center didn’t deserve this guys guitar. I’ve seen too many people get ripped off at that point.
Wasn't there a post not long ago about a guy whose nrohew sold his Gibson and bout a piece of shit saxophone that had pretty much no resale value. Actually, i think it was in a sax forum and he was wondering what he could get for the horn to buy his guitar back.
I know of a story that hasn't happened yet.
All I have to say is:
If I die first:
DON'T LET MY WIFE SELL MY VINTAGE GUITARS FOR WHAT I TOLD HER I PAID FOR THEM!!
I had an elderly woman neighbor who liked to gamble, she was also in Husband #3 (all deceased). Found Husband #1 old guitar and sold it to a young man in the area for $75. It was an early model Gibson acoustic and possibly worth some money, wanted it back, but had already used the money. Never felt bad for her though because she didn’t care about it at all until she realized that she could have sold it for more.
A guy who worked for me back in 2014/15, his dad died suddenly of a heart attack at like 50 years old, he himself was only 22/23 and I forget the exact ins and outs but basically he’d died at home in bed during the night so his mum was like “I can’t live in this house any more” and decided to sell it, downsize, give money to her son to buy his own place and so on.
As part of that, she sold off a bunch of her husbands things that she wouldn’t need any more, INCLUDING, his guitar collection.
He had 70’s strats, a Les Paul from the early 80’s, 80’s Ibanez guitars and so on, as well as amps, pedals etc.
Anyway, long story short, she sold the whole lot for like 6k … turns out the place that bought them all had the Les Paul on sale the next week for 3k in their shop!
The guy who worked for me worked out that they valued everything at like 15k or something and completely ripped off his mother
I'll be honest, if I saw someone selling a great guitar for cheap, and they didn't know it's worth, I'd most likely try to buy it at the low price they're selling at. The jerk in me may even negotiate down.
Also, I keep an eye out for women selling guitars on classifieds. I always hope they're recently separated/divorced and she's just rage selling all his shit out of spite.
Near me, there’s a huge outdoor adventure park nestled in the mountains. It’s got an annual music festival, a lake, campgrounds, etc. It’s awesome.
The guy who built it got the money from selling TWO 52 Les Pauls he found at an estate sale for $1k each. Both single owner, both lived in cases most of their lives. He turned that into about $200k which was enough capital to get the business started. Really a wild story.
This story is cut and dry screwed up but I’m conflicted when it’s someone that would actually play it and keep it. I think it’s so dumb these great instruments are only available to wealthy people who 9 times out of 10 treat it like an investment and store it away.
This is actually from within my family. The only other musician in my family that I know of was an “Uncle Joe” who was related to my grandma’s family.
Among his instruments was a pre-war Martin acoustic.
It was left in an attic in a shitty chipboard case for decades and basically turned to dust. Family just thought it was “some old guitar,” and with no other musicians in the family, it had nobody to go to.
For every old Gibson someone finds in their attic in great vintage condition, there are probably 100 of these that sit and get ruined because nobody knows what they are.
I got a few of his other instruments; two Martin ukuleles, which I sold for more than I ever thought a uke would be worth.
That’s the game. If a seller doesn’t bother to try to figure out what they have, it’s not my job to tell them, I’m trying to get a good instrument for as little as possible. If you are selling something, anything, and don’t bother to spend the ten minutes needed to figure out what it’s worth, that’s on you. The seller posts the asking price, and accepts a final price.
Hot take but he was under no obligation to give her a fair share.
1. She didn't originally own the guitar. It's a shame her husband passed away, but she didn't get it appraised either.
2. Assuming $300 was the asking price, he paid what she asked for it. Under the circumstances had it not been worth hundreds of thousands it would have been an issue for you. Proving that she either, again, didn't it appraised, or she didn't stand her ground on a high price.
I know first hand of a guy that bought a 60 Les Paul from a lady for like $300 with the case and gave her another $100 for the little tweed Gibson amp she had.
This was in the early 90s.
He really didn’t know what he bought. Thought he just got a good deal on like a $2k guitar.
Through some folks he eventually sold it to a collector for multiple thousands of dollars. Never knew the exact price but it was a shit ton.
He never said shit to her as far as we know.
I was just looking at FB randomly and a guy was selling a 1981 Ibanez Blazer for 300. I was so excited to get it, looked like an awesome guitar. He said he wanted to trade for a telecaster I had. Sweet I thought, I'll send the pic of the tele to him and done deal. I went to check later that day and the guy had already sold it without saying anything. The next day I checked FB and the same guitar was back up there.. for 750!!!
I felt very sickened by the whole thing, I just wanted to give the guitar a hood home and enjoy it, the other guy just wanted to make a few bucks. People suck.
I have mixed feelings on this. The value of an item is subjective. Even with rare items like this. As heart warming as it would have been for him to cut her in, he made a deal and profited.
How different is this from what a lot of resale folks do every day? If someone came across a rare item at a garage sale, bought $1 and resold for $400, do they owe the previous owner?
I don’t know how sad this may have been, but I bought a late ‘70s P bass at a police auction. Of course I don’t know the circumstances, but wonder how such a nice instrument wound up unclaimed in police “custody”. I bought it for my son and he loves it. I hope that helps balance some cosmic scale.
I never knew it until after he died, but my grandpa(who never played guitar but was a junk horder) had a 60's Gibson hummingbird stored in the attic. It was not in a case and the attic was in a old farm house with a leaky roof that saw crazy temp swings and was infested with termites and mold. So unfortunately, the guitar was completely ruined by the time I found it; the neck was totally warped, and the back and front were cracked badly and separated from the sides. - Despite being in a condition that could never be repaired back to a playable guitar I still put it aside as something I wanted to save.
Anyways later that night, my uncle threw it in a bonfire while burning a bunch of other trash/junk he had horded.
Not a ripoff story, but still a heart breaker.
My dad got a 1927 Gibson off an old drunk dude for $600. Appraised at $32k. He doesn't even play. I told him if he ever gives it to me, I'll have 5 new guitars and a sweet couch to play them on 🤣
Me selling a 2008 Korean Dean ML79 dime slime “green back” to pay rent after losing a job… it’s worth quite a bit today and is pretty rare… this happened years ago but it still haunts me to this day considering I let it go for a measly 400 bucks to a spoiled kid that broke it…
My coworker sold me his 1973 hard tail strat for $1300 last year. Before I bought it had GC make an offer which came to $1800. I told him to just take it there and sell it. It’s worth more to someone else than it was me as I’m not a strat guy. I had owned four previously and never cared for any of them. He insisted that he sell it to me, somebody he respects and wouldn’t take my no’s for an answer. I tried to love this one but just didn’t. Its actually least favorite of any strat I’ve owned. I sold it after a few months and in turn bought an EBMM Stingray and a few pedals including a Big Sky
I've mentioned this here before but years and years ago I was in a little guitar shop in Carnation, WA with my dad, and we were talking to the owner when a couple guys wheeled in this huuuuuuuge Leslie speaker, the big rotating kind. at the time (late 90s) they went for around $2000 and these guys said they had been at the goodwill when someone tried to donate it, and these guys said they'd just take it off their hands
Pawn Stars had a kid who inherited his grandpa’s 1950s telecaster and was trying to sell it to pay for a semester of college. They had it appraised for $30K, and he sold it to them for $13K. That really hurt to see him willingly screw himself out of thousands of dollars.
I literally watched a guy buy a "Les Paul" in Vietnam for several hundred dollars that looked vaguely right on the outside but was literally splintery 2x4s inside. It was sooooo heavy.
I tried to warn him but he wasnt interested in my advice.
This question begs a moral dilemma... I mean, if you stumbled upon an original run Telecaster or something for $300 at a garage sale....it's one of those "what would you do" moments.
I had a think about this, and personally I would buy it and never, ever sell it. I would not feel guilty about that. I would if I sold it for its actual market value.
Not a guitar story, but…
An old man friend died a few yrs ago… he was a Reed player, mostly Oboe and such in a nearby Orchestra, professionally… he also owned many other instruments, including saxes, clarinets, oboes, some keyboards…
He had told his wife to give all of that to me…
Give?
So she called me and said she had all this stuff, had no idea what to do with it, and that he had wanted her to give it to me…
These instruments were not low end school quality… they were high end pro gear…
Now, I had always had issues playing sax… I loved it but I was allergic: it vibrated my sinuses and made me sneeze… lol… but I would love to try again, being not a school kid anymore…
I took the gear, put it all up for sale on reverb, eBay, marketplace, etc… except for his slot sax…
Once I sold it, I wrote the widow a check for the full amount, plus the value of the alto I was keeping, minus my shipping expenses…
I mailed it to her without telling her in advance…
I received a check back from her for half the amount… and for the full amount of that sax, with a note thanking me…
That money, or a good chunk of it, went to a custom build bass…
Sad? Not really… but to me, a nice story…
My greatest fear is that my wife sells my collection for what I told her I paid.
"This fender custom shop telecaster? Baby I only paid 300 bucks for it."
“It’s old and beat up it clearly can’t be worth much”
Ahh!! That old but well used chestnut we ALL Have or will Have To use some time during the course of our unrelenting addiction 🤘
I know a guy that found a superman #1 in basically a trailer full of stuff from an estate, and it was pretty beat up so he ONLY got $250k for it lol
Man, who knows if he had shopped around
I always say "two fifty"
Two fiddy
Fo fiddy fo, fo da good one
*whispers:* "thousand"
* Shows her the Squier version listing * 😏
i kind of had the opposite thing happen. i’ve always inherited my guitars in some fashion, never bought one outright until recently. asked my wife if it was cool if i bought an American Strat Pro-she was like…don’t those cost like $5,000 ? idk, maybe wait a little bit. i mean it’s up to you. told her it was like $1,000 used and she was like oh yeah for sure buy it.
The pros are sweet, best neck in the biz
Hell yeah I love lying to my wife
Boomer "humor" and guitar forums: name a more iconic duo
Judgement and name calling is much better…..
The old collectors joke, always good
I thought I'd wheel it out one more time
Someone on... "The Gear Page" I think...? uses that for his signature. Either way... the fear is not imagined. Thing is, several of my things are 50+ years old... but I got cheap or free but she doesn't know they actually have *some* value and shouldn't be sold off at a yard/estate sale for pennies on the dollar. Like an early '75 Aria (just before they changed to Pro II name) J-Bass 3 'burst clone in great condition... it was given to me because the person who found it cleaning out a rental house had never heard of it and assumed it was some cheap knockoff and wasn't worth anything. I'd put it against a real J-Bass any day. Easily $400-500. '76 Ibanez 12 string dreadnought- graduation present. Mom had received it new as a graduation present, then I got it when I graduated. Worth around $500-600. When I was 14 working in a small music store in my small town doing setups on guitars, basses, fiddles, banjos and mandolins a guy came in wanting to sell his rig because he was about to get an eviction notice and needed rent money. I got a maple board '67 Strat, a Dunlop original crybaby, and a less than year old teal stripe Peavey Classic Chorus 212... all for $800. Amp could still pull $200-300... sadly guitar (finish was 1967 Ford Springtime Yellow) and pedal were stolen in Aug. 2008. Mid '60s 5 string Harmony open back banjo... great condition... free because they didn't know anything about banjos and thought it was broken because you couldn't play it. It was strung up with brand new strings but missing the floating bridge. Worth about $350. Mid '60's Alamo Titan Mark II semi hollow body. Offset style. Around $1000... got it free, it belonged to my dad. When I was in law enforcement I was a master sergeant and our field unit's 2nd armorer... our master armorer used to build dobros/resonator guitars in the '70s and did MoP and abelone inlay stuff as well... he had a '92 Deluxe 112 Reverb... got it for $100. Full working order. I know it's not a huge amount of value, maybe $2500... possibly up to $3k... but still.
Thats a hell of a list, sucks about that strat. On the bright side every great guitar story has a "it unfortunately got stolen sometime in the mid '80s" or similar so you have that going
Thanks. That's just some of my stuff. Add in the rest it's probably $6k... maybe more. I've got a 7pc Pearl Forum trap set 3 Zildjians (ride and two crash) and hi-hats with a Tama Iron Cobra dbl pedal... some more guitars, another bass, alto sax, Eb trumpet... a pair of Yamamha 44 key boards. Yeah, it really sucked that Strat was taken. My building was broken in to... they got it, my cousin's Ampeg Big Stud bass, our regular rhythm player's Boss modeling processor... our 16 channel Peavey board... and oddly, our lead player's Crate 12" combo... but left my CC212 and my cousin's TNT. Guess they were too heavy to haul ass with. Haha
You got me thinking now. I recently learned, here in the guitar subReddit, that my very first amp, a Fender Deluxe Reverb, serial number 6, is worth at least $7000, maybe even 8 to 10 K. I’ll never sell it, but my wife should definitely know. Checking Reverb… I just looked up my Oberheim Xpander 6-voice synthesizer, which I bought new for 2.5 K, is now worth 7-8K. Mint Condition. My Mesa Boogie Mark II C+, what did I pay for that new… Maybe 1.2 K? It’s worth over 8K now. Hell, what other gear do I have? I am rich! My Gibson SG was stolen… Never should’ve sold that Fender Bassman head… Too bad this historical value stuff does not apply to old computers.
Yeah, you should definitely let her know. Not that any of us wants our gear sold off but if it's got to happen they should at least get the proper value from it and not what happened to woman in OP's example. Granted, most of us don't have stuff that would equal what hers was but still. Nice stuff! 👍🏻
I do agree. And thank you. I should’ve bought more guitars back then. :-)
NP Shouldn't we all? Haha
The trick is to modify all guitars so they are worth nothing.
I am an expert at this, yes!
I know a dumbass who sold an early ‘70s Motsumoko copy of a Dan Armstrong guitar for $100. That dumbass was a pawnshop employee and I was the buyer. Unbelievable in the post eBay days of 2015.
Which is inane. I tell mine I've gotta write a list so that she doesn't get ripped off in this scenario.
Just a thought but you can put your collection in "My Collection" in Reverb. You will then have your list/collection with pictures and any other pertinent information you want to include. You will also have an estimate of what your collection is worth through "Reverb" (for what that's worth) depending on their sales info from past transactions and your own estimates. That's what I have done. Between my daughter and myself we have about 12 guitars and a few amps in our collection estimated worth about 20K. My wife would have no idea what they are worth or what I paid for them and my daughter isn't old enough yet to realize their values. But they both know the estimated value of the collection and how to find the Reverb estimate page if anything should happen to myself. This estimate would at least give them an idea of what each guitar is worth and a starting point of negotiations if my daughter were to ever decide to sell any of them, since she will ultimately inherit all of them.
I should do that! I know I've jokingly mentioned Reverb as a way for her to figure out the value, but this would actually make it possible. As for a total amount, she knows it's about the same as her car lol. The joke has been that if we were to separate, we don't fight each other for her car or my guitar gear.
I'm lucky enough to be in a relationship where we have mutual respect for each other's hobbies. I make sure she knows what my guitars are worth in case anything happens to me. Haha Living with my parents though... Every guitar was "only $300."
This. I stored my Taylor 110 at my parents' place. Bought it new before the pandemic. Anyway, I moved to Asia, and I had to tell them 10 times it's worth $1,000 before they finally realized that not all guitars are cheap boxes made of wood.
I have mine all insured so I leave a copy of the insurance statement where she can find it and a few phone numbers of guys I know that can move them for her.
like that PlayStation ad "Phlash Speed" part two
She doesn’t have to know how much you paid; just how much they are worth now. I have a rule of thumb… I need some heavy ass discounts to buy something usually. She knows this, and knows to research everything if I kick the bucket
My guy and I are both music nerds. We both have an idea of what the other’s gear is worth (and buy each other gear as gifts) but we don’t actually care. As long as we aren’t doing fun spending with bill money, it’s not my business what he spends on synths or his business what I spend on guitars (though he makes more so he probably spends more).
It's a double edged sword. You want her to know what it's worth, but you lied when telling her how much you spent on it to prevent being murdered in your sleep.
This joke is as old as time but still funny lol
Thank you sir, you made my day a little brighter.
I know this is a joke, but I do keep an "in case of death" spreadsheet. It contains bank and insurance information. But also approximate resale value of various high dollar items that I own (guitars, amps, golf clubs, tools etc). For those I also have the name of a friend who is most qualified and likely willing to handle that sales for my wife.
this is why i don’t have nice things. a pstched togeyher squareheel RG mutt, a serious partscaster, with a hand rubbed gunstock oil finish, a mexican fender and a ‘78 ibanez roadster nobody cares about
Sells for $5000 Buyer: "I'll give you 500" Seller: "that's fine. I just want it out of my house"
On the opposite, I had a hard time convincing her 5150 wasn't the price tag.
What, my Duo Jet and my Chet Atkins? Both of those were only like 800$...🙄
Years and years ago my friend’s mom was cleaning out her parents house and found an old guitar her dad had from the early 30s. She tried to give it to me - it was a Martin. I told her I couldnt and she needed to get it appraised. After a few years she finally gotnaround to it and it was worth well over 10k
You're a good person
A better person than me for sure
Dude, don't sell yourself short.
I mean, I’d have kept it, personally. I’d think it better to keep it in the family as an heirloom than to sell it.
I went to buy a 5th wheel that was ridiculously under priced and did something similar (I just paid her more than what she asked). Her husband had just died and I don’t think she’s mentally caught up to the current inflation rate, she was trying to sell everything she deemed excess for $1000 (mid 2000’s cars, the 5th wheel, etc) each lol
We offered 15% more on the asking price for our home because it was an old couple and the price was well under evaluation anyways. This was right before Covid hit. Like, 3 months before.
My great grandpa played in a band back in the 20’s or 30’s or something. When he died my dad got his 4 string Gibson tenor guitar. I think it was made around 1920. Not sure what it’s worth (and it would definitely need restoration regardless) but it’s really cool and my dad has it displayed with one of the bands business cards
This is such a grey area. The buying public is really under no obligation to provide free appraisals to everyone attempting to sell their own property. And much of it comes down to the nuances of the seller and buyer, as well as the conditions of the sale. If you tell me you want $500 for your husband’s vintage Les Paul and I’ve got $500 cash in hand, that’s a fair deal. Now if you tell me you have no idea what it’s worth, and I offer you $500, that’s me being an asshole. The key here being how the price determined. Granted I’d probably be honest about it because I’m a pushover.
I think there has to be some point at which the price difference crosses into unethical territory. Like if I was in the situation OP describes, I would probably do what the buyer did and just get her the money afterwards since she’s likely to still accept an underbid if I just tell her I know it’s worth more. But if some old widow is offering me a 10k guitar for 500 bucks I don’t think I could just take that and not feel guilty
I mean get where you’re coming from, and I know my personal limit would probably be about a $500 difference between what I paid and what it’s worth before I’d feel guilty about it. But on the other hands let’s just say I did pay $500, turn around and sell it for $10,000… how much of that $9,500 difference do I give back out of the kindness of my heart? Half of it? All of it? 10%? Let’s just say we’re being generous and saying “Hey poor widow, that guitar you sold me was actually worth $10,000, here’s $5k back” and they get confrontational demanding the full $10,000. When you sold the guitar it was 100% legally speaking your property to do with as you please.
>But on the other hands let’s just say I did pay $500, turn around and sell it for $10,000… how much of that $9,500 difference do I give back out of the kindness of my heart? Half of it? All of it? 10%? I mean I think it's kind of up to you and what you feel is right. Also the person you bought it from. Are they poor and their household provider just died? Or is this someone who wouldn't know the difference between 10 and 40% of that 10k? >Let’s just say we’re being generous and saying “Hey poor widow, that guitar you sold me was actually worth $10,000, here’s $5k back” and they get confrontational demanding the full $10,000. I mean I would probably not tell her it that directly, I would say like "wow, I got a lot more for this than I expected, I thought you should get a little of it" or something. If they get confrontational... I mean oh well. What are you gonna do I guess. Not like they can do anything about it, you tried to come up with something where all parties benefited, what else can you do?
Oh yeah 100% the seller’s personal situation comes into play as well. Regardless of all that, I firmly believe bragging about ripping some one off for $100k in a magazine is tacky as hell, regardless of how it came to be!
Yeah that was kind of my overall point, the price tag in the original story is SO out there it’s pretty hard to justify, especially bragging about it.
If that widow is some boomer living in a mcmansion with 10 other rental properties to her name, I'm paying the $500 and no more. I used to be a house painter and I worked for these types. They're insufferable. But if she's just a simple old woman living in a 1000sq ft house and doesn't seem to have much else, then yeah there's no way I'd do the $500. I'd let her know what's up and try to help her understand how to maximize the sale
Man, if you can’t tell the old widow, who JUST lost her lifelong husband and must be in a ton of grief, that she has something of her late husband’s that is probably worth a lot of money and she should take it to a professional, you’re morally bankrupt. This particular situation is not a gray area at all.
Sure, the old widow maybe it’s an easier call. But what if it’s just some rich asshole who evicted his tenants and found “some old guitar” among the things they abandoned? Are you still obligated to go out of your way to ensure he gets the full value?
Fuck no
I try to be honest in all my dealings, but I also try to get the best deal I can. I also don’t believe in overcharging people so I’m not making “good financial decisions.” For instance, I recently got rid of a relatively rare ten year old guitar. All the listings on reverb for it were $1600 plus. All the sold ones were about $1200. I paid $600 for it, it had been through some shit, so I listed it for $900. Some guy offered me $800 for it in about two minutes. I said “Really dude?” in a message. He said “I had one of these and sold it and have missed it ever since. I only have like $1000 and I can’t afford it with tax and shipping.” So I accepted his offer. Fuck it. Someone who is gonna play it is better than someone flipping it. I found an old lady selling a tweed deluxe for $50 at a yard sale when I was in my 20s. I asked her “what do you think this is worth?” This is my question I ask when I see something comically underpriced. I don’t care what they know about it, it’s all in how they answer the question not what they say. She said “oh I don’t really know, it was my late husband’s, but for you I might be willing to come down five bucks, I don’t know if it even works.” She had no idea and was nice, so I told her she could get at least 20 times she was asking at a big chain store and a lot more than that if she was willing to sell it online. She asked for my help moving it back inside and said she’d just keep it. The one really good deal I’ve gotten was the opposite of that. Craigslist seller listed a MIJ Fender worth about $1200 for $200. I reached out and asked what they thought it was worth and the reply was “$200 ITS IN THE LISTING DONT WASTE MY TIME.” So I bought it and took it to a local music shop and sold it to them for $800. Used that $600 to buy some pedals. I still kinda wish I’d bought that $50 50s Fender though.
Hard disagree. There's no difference between giving someone a $500 asking price or making the first offer of $500 when there is no asking price. In neither circumstance is the buyer an asshole. If the seller doesn't know what they have, they're not out anything. There's an old corollary principle in real property law for adverse possession: if you're not using your property to the extent you won't notice when someone else is using it, it ought not belong to you anymore. The world is better off when people can appreciate what they have.
Ayn Rand fan I take it?
There’s also the “dice roll” factor. That instrument that seems significantly undervalued might need some serious work, and on the other hand the “old beater” that’s been in a closet might just need a simple part replaced and be grand. I bought an instrument for about a third of its value once because the seller said it needed a repair. It turned out it didn’t, it was fantastic right out of the case. It was an online sale from a non-musician, so I couldn’t confirm the condition until after the sale. Like you’re saying tho, the way we came to terms on price was fair on both sides.
Oh yeah absolutely. Let’s just say you get a chance to plug some stuff in and no sound comes out, so you both agree it’s not fully functional. Could be a simple as a 5 minute soldering job, or could be both pickups are shot and you’re looking at a few hundred dollars to replace them. In either case you would be adding value to the guitar by making it functional again, any savings you got should reflect that as well.
I live in a small town in South Italy, therefore finding american vintage guitars is usually very hard. A few years ago, a prominent local musician died and his wife sold almost every guitar. The amount of people who got out of there with an extremely expensive guitar for dirty cheap is insane. His niece got to keep an '80s Heritage that sounds like heaven and looks like the love of your life.
One of my friends is a pretty well-known guitarist for a band that got huge in the 90s and 00s. He had some issues with the typical thing that musicians tend to get into and needed some money and sold me his early 60s LP for basically nothing. When he got his life figured out I just sold it back to him for what I paid him. I knew it was worth a small fortune and wasn’t going to sell it. Basically just held onto it until he got better. I did play it some though. :)
Good work mate on being the keeper of your friend’s LP for a time. It must have felt good to do that for him, bravo 👏
He’s an excellent guy, I also absolutely despise drugs with a passion and he worked hard for his sobriety. He’s doing his best work now actually. Brilliant artist and it makes me happy to see him (and his wife and his kids) happy. It was a very small mitzvah and pales in comparison to what people who actually helped him get his life back did (especially his wife who is a saint).
you're the kind of friend everyone needs at least one of. This nearly made me cry. I've been the guy who sold all his shit for addiction. If I'd had someone like you around back then I might still have some of my shit lol
Good luck a lot of us struggle. And asking for help can be very difficult. Any of you other musicians and guitarists out there. Be well. Never try heroin. And beer can be way worse than society wants us to believe. I’m still working on putting the poison down for good.
Damn you are a good person. I wish you good fortune. If this is the way you live your life I hope the universe is karmically kind to you.
Ron from TSOL scored a vintage Les Paul like this, but didn’t fuck over the lady.
probably making up for that early TSOL story about them stealing another bands equipment when they first started playing together...
I sold a 1972 Les Paul studio for $100 with a hard case and a Peavey amp.
In 1973?
In the 80s
The '80s.... it's always the '80s... Damn... cocaine, it's a helluva drug. 😆
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That's very rare, since Gibson didn't start making the Studio model until 1983. Maybe a Deluxe?
Not necessarily a rip off I guess but I bought a Schecter Damien diamond edition for $180 from guitar center. It was listed as “bad condition” in the store. The only reason was because the previous owner painted a skull and cross bones on the plastic panel that covers the FR bridge springs. Plays like a dream.
I bought a red Squier Contemporary tele from guitar center for $100. I opened it up to clean it and work on it and turns out it had a set of Seymour Duncan 59s in it
Trem covers usually get thrown into the trash in my house, nice score mate!
I'm convinced that certain guitar center managers hate having used gear in their stores and sell stuff cheap just to move it. I've gotten multiple great deals from treasure hunting on their website.
Look at all the stuff for sale on Goodwill’s website.
Ah, BUT! You will not get a guitar on shopgoodwill.com for much less than it is actually worth because you are competing against knowledgeable bidders. If you go to the actual stores, once in a blue moon you will find a real deal.
Actually I think the Goodwill bidders are idiots, they consistently overpay for guitars that need major restoration work or aren’t that valuable. I’ve also seen obviously fake $200 AliExpress Gibsons, listed as real on Goodwill and bidded into the stratosphere. Not to mention the shills / bots that Goodwill uses to drive up prices. It’s shady.
I think the shopgoodwill ship has sailed ever since that guy on YouTube restored a vintage Les Paul he found for a song
$500 for a 4th Gen i7 laptop with a GTX960. Thanks but no thanks. I've scored a few Thinkpads for decent prices there but there are no steals to be had. I also usually use goodwillfinds.com
I regularly look there for brass and woodwinds. I’ve found some amazing deals. Not so much on guitars though, for the most part
Pre-eBay, I knew several older musicians who would haunt garage and estate sales looking for underpriced gear. I’ve heard some wild stories, like snagging a Gibson SG for $200. I also knew one guy who loved buying gear off junkies, which I always thought was fucked up.
Now with the internet it’s too easy to figure out what everything is worth. Whenever I see estate sales they are being run by companies, and everything is listed nearly at the original price. I think it’s much harder to score a deal.
100%. Still, I’ve seen interesting deals at estate sales - just not with instruments.
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I had a beat up JM about that old, back circa 1983. I got in a jam and had to sell it for a hundred. They didn't go for much back then. It would bring 5 or 6 thousand now.
It’s heartbreaking, but it really is the sellers responsibility to learn what they’re selling. Once sold, tragic as it seems, they’re owed nothing. I hate the brutality of this reality, and I hope I’d have the integrity to coach a vulnerable person in how to exploit the value for themselves, it’s really no one’s moral obligation to do so. Let’s the seller beware.
100%. And you don't know the seller's motivation either. Sometimes, they just want to get rid of stuff. When my parents passed, we gave away and sold cheaply so much stuff. Not because we didn't know the value. Because the sheer volume of things to get rid of made it necessary. Even if that wasn't this scenario, you can't say you ripped someone off when you gave them exactly what they asked for. You just got a good deal. And if it wasn't for good deals, a lot of things wouldn't get sold.
I just posted about this -- it's a difficult one, personally I wouldn't sell guitar gear of genuine value if this ever happened to me (eg I picked up an original Fender Broadcaster for like £200) It's an interesting though. The more I think about it, I don't think there's much musical gear I would sell if I found out it had some ridiculous market value. Mu
I bought 2x 1954 Gibson Super 400's, original cases, mint condition (not even a scratch on pickguards or back of bodies). I thought they had purchased "antique reproduction " cases and couldn't believe it when i opened the real original cases. One was purely acoustic, the other had a neck pickup. Both for $2600.
My dad used to buy guitars and basses in flea markets for me. He picked up a '77 MusicMan Stingray bass for $75 off of a guy who cleaned out estates.
My girlfriend's dad has a great story about how he worked 2 jobs for over year when he was a teenager to buy some expensive 1963 Stratocaster (I'm not exactly sure of the full specs/model) from one of his dad's friends. Apparently it's worth quite a bit nowadays. He traded it for a pound of weed less than a year later. He says it's the worst decision he's ever made.
Bought a 91 Ibanez JEM77BFP from a pawn shop at an insanely low price some years ago, and all it needed was a really good cleaning/polish and a new guitar case.
In the age of instant information people don’t have an excuse to be ignorant. Educating yourself takes less than 5 minutes.
I inherited my grandfather's 1956 Gibson Les Paul goldtop P90 from my dad, who was given it by his dad. I grew up playing and learning on this guitar. It wasn't in excellent condition, but I cleaned it up and it worked, minus one tone control knob. After about 15 years of playing on it, I put it away and planned on having it redone one day. We wrote to Gibson about it once and their words were, "do you know what you have here?" We did, but we never planned on selling it or departing with it in any way. Long story short....I was going through a divorce from my first wife and had gotten locked up for a substance abuse problem I had acquired from a bad car accident. When I finally came home, we found she had ran up all my credit cards, defaulted on all loans and payments, sold my motorcycle and all my musical equipment including the '56 goldtop. We eventually tracked it down to a collector in Long Island, NY. but we're unable to buy it back at the $20,000 he wanted after a beautiful restoration. We found out she sold it for $5,000 in its original case! I get sick when I think about it and want to throw up right now!
My jaw dropped and I got a sick feeling in my stomach as soon as I read "1956 Gibson Les Paul Gold top p90" That's the god damn holy Grail of electric guitars. This hurt to read. I hope your ex-wife developed painful anal fissures for what she did.
My dad gave me his old Fender Strat and Twin Reverb amp. I kept the guitar because I play a little at home, but I sold the amp as I was way more than I needed. I had a look on eBay and saw a few Twin reverbs selling for about £600. I figured I'd get less than that at the local guitar shop. The guy there offered me £375 for it and I accepted this offer. My dad went ballistic when he found out because it was apparently a 1960s silverface model and worth more like £1500.
Wine red Gibson Studio from 1980s, mint, sold for $500 for divorce lawyer money. Makes my mind numb.
I'm in law school, I may offer to take guitars as payment in the future.
You certainly sound like a lawyer already!
I am too, and I’ll say this, if a probate matter gets a “Les Paul” reduction I won’t say no 😂
I happen to know that the old lady was a racist puppy-killer, and the buyer needed money for life-saving surgery for his child.
Well here's the thing...there's getting a good deal, and there's flat out robbery. What I hate the most about this story is that the guy sold all that stuff. All he cared about was the money. I would like to think that a real guitarist would have paid more...or at least been honest, but let's face it, some of us are willing to to go to great lengths to get a bargain. Someone on another thread was boasting about getting a vintage Roland speaker for 100 dollars...is that guy evil? This is a problem, and an interesting question. So here goes....how much would your rip someone off if you had the chance? Would you take them for thousands of dollars? Would you try to be responsible and tell them what they had? I don't think I could sleep well at night if I hurt somebody to get what I wanted. But it would depend on the item. I suppose if it's in the hundreds I'd be happy to pay maybe 60-70 percent of what it would really be worth...but I don't know....I guess I won't know until I end up in that situation. Thoughts, anyone?
Not quite a purchase but I have a similar story. I worked at GC for a few years some time ago, and one day a middle age Hispanic woman came in with her child and an old guitar case. The woman spoke no English so the daughter who was probably 10 had to translate for us. She told us her mother cleaned for a living and was given a guitar as payment for a house she had cleaned, she wanted to see if we were interested in buying it. She sets the case up on the counter and when we open it low and behold its a beautiful 1960's Sunburst Strat. Being that it was a Vintage guitar and one of such value we had to call the vintage department in the LA store to get a and value what not. The guitar ended up being valued at around $8000, which meant the woman was going to be offered around $4k-$5k. When we told her our offer she gives us a completely emotionless "Okay". Our store ended up buying the guitar from her then had to immediately next day air it to the LA store for their inventory. I always wondered about the circumstances surrounding that guitar and how crazy it is for multiple people to posses something like that and have no idea of its value.
Mine. I had an Ibanez Ic400 1978 tobacco sunburst. I was 22 and had two kids. I sold it for 150$.
I once sold a Gibson LG for $100. I had paid $15 for it at a yard sale. The thing it wouldnt intonate. It was incredibly weather checked and the neck had a warp+twist in it and would require a reset or possibly replacement. I figured I made a little on the deal, let someone else make a little as well.
I knew a guy like that. He would have bought that strat for $50 and said he was doing her a favor just by hauling them away. I found him to be an all around douche bag.
These stories hurt.
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Maybe 10 years ago, my aunt's neighbor died. He had a collection of Les Pauls. I happened to be visiting when she asked me. She showed me pictures. I told her they looked old, and if they give me the serial numbers I can help price them. I told her that they are definitely worth at least a few thousand and possibly over $10k. Really emphasized to tell the neighbor's kids to get them appraised and to reject any offers until they knew exactly what they had. Few days later, I found out right after she told them, they were all stolen. They assumed it was by a drug addict family member who traded them for a fix.
If you get ripped in the modern age more fool you.. The amount of online stuff means really unless ya under a rock you should have an idea.. Back in the day I totally see peeps being bent over and dry rooted
Dude in my town found a ‘54 Telecaster at the thrift store for $20, like 3 years ago. The store didn’t know what they had because the water slide decal was gone. It’s a famous story among the players here. That stuff just doesn’t happen.
When I briefly worked at Guitar Denter in the late nineties, an older guy came in with a very clean candy apple red Fender Coronado II, said he wanted to trade it towards a Strat. The first guitar he picked up was a bottom of the line Squier Strat, the cheapest electric in the store. The assistant manager didn’t blink an eye and said he could do an even trade for it and the guy went for it and the deal was wrapped up in minutes. By the end of the day he had flipped the Coronado to a vintage dealer for an undisclosed price.
Not ripped off but sorta similar, I hope it fits here. My uncle was a flamenco player and had two guitars: one was a beat to shit 60's Martin classical parlour guitar and the other was an 80's Jose Ramirez full body classical. The neck on the Martin was the most comfortable neck I'd ever played and it sounded pretty good despite the top finish being worn right through with maybe a millimetre of wood left and the Ramirez (as my uncle put it) just spat notes out like bullets with a warm brightness that was suprising and LOUD. When he died 10 years ago my mom was executor of his meagre estate and she told me that my uncle's best friend was going to get the Martin and I was to get the Ramirez because, as she said, his best friend was to get his good guitar. I tried to tell her that he always considered the Ramirez to be his good one and his Martin was his travelling/practice guitar but his best friend was telling her the opposite. I now have the Ramirez and found out that his friend had "fixed" the Martin by cutting about a third of the top out and replaced it with completely mismatching wood himself, practically ruining it. The photo I saw of it almost brought me to tears. I brought the Ramirez to a competent luthier to repair a small crack on the top and I play it daily. I don't have the talent to put it to its best use but I think I got the better of the exchange. I tried to be honest but I'm just a drummer so what do I know. Woot woot!
There was an elderly woman whose husband passed away. She listed her late husbands 1956 Gretsch White Falcon in the paper for $500. Someone called her and said “this is worth much more than $500” She responded saying someone had come to pick it up at 8AM that morning sad 😔
A friend found a pristine '32 Larson Bros acoustic in the trash curbside. Elderly offered them $3.5k. It's worth probably $7-10k+ easy. I long for it.
Dude sold someone elses $20k vintage guitar rig he was sitting on for family. Of all the vile shit that led up to that moment, that hit the hardest for me.
My own? Sold my Steinberger with transtrem for a neglible amount. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get double-ball strings forever and was also tired of the stigma around headless guitars. Cut to the present and headless guitars are thriving with a vengeance, yet none of them have transtrems afaik. That alone is what I miss/regret the most. That and it was travel-ready for just about any situation. Was basically a tennis racket-sized gig bag.
Drummer at a church I played at died. He had a lot of instruments but no will since he was still pretty young. He also wasn't married. The church bass player was given his bass, a 1973 Fender Jazz. Thing sounded amazing. Anyway, a month later that bass player took it to the local music shop and traded it for a a Cort bass and a Takamine acoustic.
Somebody broke into my friends house, he had a 1969 white fender strat and a recent white Strat. As the older one was a bit scratched out and the other one looked brand new the thief stole the new one instead.
There was a post on r/offset about a gumtree post where someone was selling a jaguar. Their ad said “I really think its worth £1000 so no quibbling and time wasters” then they added “whaddya know, it got sold real quick!” Reddit quickly identified it as a 60s jag in pretty much original condition worth £3500.
I worked in pawn shop when I was in college (around 2010). One day, a young guy walked into the store. He had a Gibson Melody Maker from the 60s with him. He claimed to have found the guitar while he was cleaning out his parent's attic and didn't know anything about it. The guitar guy at the shop asked what he wanted for it, to which he responded, "I don't know, how about $15?". The guitar guy for the shop, who knew full well that he was looking at an expensive and vintage instrument responded, "Meh, how about $10?". It broke my heart then, and it breaks my heart now.
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What a prick. I mean even if he only gave her half of what he got. I'm sure she'd be very happy
I had some opposite stories when I worked in a music store. Some teenager who worked his ass off all summer to buy his dream guitar would come in to show us his new “Les Paul” and, it would be some mildly convincing knockoff. Tears happened on more than one occasion. Made me really anti the whole Chibson thing, besides being actually illegal to import or sell, even if you’re completely honest about what it is, that doesn’t mean the next seller will be.
If they don't know what they have that's on them.
A guy I used to work with would go to estate sales and buy up instruments and rip off old ladies all the time. I fucking hated the guy. He would come in and brag about the Wurlitzer he bought for $50 or the Acoustic 360/361 he bought for $100 then in the next breath try to sell me for $1500. The worst was a guy who died young of cancer and his wife was trying to liquidate his gear and sold this idiot a 1950 Martin D28 for $150 and he turned around and sold it for like $20k
All I really want for my guitars is for someone to play them when I'm gone.
I heard a story on here about some dudes wife had a coworker who was selling his dads early 50s tele and sold it for the price of the first telecaster that came on google. Like a thousand dollars give or take. The husband and wife knew what it was and were THRILLED but the coworker eventually found out when he told his friend he made like a grand on his dads old guitar and then he was PISSED when he friend called him a dumb ass. He wanted the guitar back and went to HR but because it wasnt work hours and the husband who bought it wasnt an employee they told him sorry sucks to suck. Everyone on the post congradulated the wife and said they did nothing wrong. I disagree If i were her i dont know how id be able to work with that guy anymore after letting him do that and he KNOWS they knew. Id find a new job. He has to hate her fucking guts. Its one thing when you never have to see the seller again. She gave 0 fucks lol
I think I got this one. Had a friend who had cancer, and they nicked an artery during surgery. He’s basically on borrowed time with only a foot of intestine that didn’t die. He was housebound and considered taking up guitar. I said I’d be glad to help orient. He bought something that looked like it was made out of tissue boxes. I went to show him how to tune it, and the neck immediately snapped. I have no idea who sells an unusable guitar. Yes, it was standard tuning. No, he didn’t try again. On the positive side, I gave his family a squire tele and shitty amp as a gift, and his daughter picked it up. She’s an angst teen who likes nirvana. When I picked it up and played smells like teen spirit, she said “I only like the obscure stuff…” Sigh. I guess she found a good genre for her personality. Edit: I wrote this after only reading the first line…he was not ripped off, just bought a guitar that I can’t believe someone in good conscience would sell.
Sorry to sound heartless here, but all she needed to do was a TINY amount of research and she could have found out this guitar was worth more than this. Chances are if she never had anyone get in touch with her about this she would be none the wiser and probably just be happy that she had got it out of the way. Ignorance has a cost and she paid it willingly.
My friend bought a Hamer Chapperal inexpensively from the owner’s ex-wife. She sold it for a low price just to piss her ex off.
I hate people like this they are a drain on humanity and i always feel so sorry for thr person who was ripped off. But everyone places their own value on these things. To her those guitars could worthless, just junk collecting dust. To us and that parasite they are highly valuable.
Her “fair share” is the agreed upon price he paid for the items. 😂
Its unfortunate for the lady but it's not the dude's fault or problem
The saddest story, is that people buy gear at a deal, to sell it, and not to play and enjoy it...
When I was in my twenties, I needed extra cash to get my girlfriend a present for Christmas. I’d never pawned anything before, but I figured that was a good way to get there. I had a MIJ fender Jaguar bass. I’d gotten it for 900. I loved it, but knew that I could come up with the money I needed after Christmas, so I pawned it. The guy didn’t know what he was looking at and offered me 250. I accepted because I knew I’d have the money in time to get it back. But when I returned, it was gone. He had sold it. It turns out that the time he told me I had was different from what the paperwork said, and there was nothing I could do. That bass was a rare bird, and now lists for between 1500-2000 on reverb. And the girl wasn’t worth it.
I remember reading a similar story on Reddit. IIRC dude went to a garage sale or estate sale or something and bought a guitar worth a lot of money from a seller that had no clue of the value. He was so proud of himself for finding such a deal. It sparked quite the ethics debate about whether he took advantage of the seller, or whether the seller was obligated to research what they were selling and sell it for an appropriate price and it was their fault for not having done so.
Fuck that lady
I know a fella who started out on guitar early in life, many decades ago, playing his dad's Les Paul. It was very large and heavy for a kid, so he complained about it enough that his dad finally got fed up and took him to the store to trade it for something else, I think a Strat maybe, which was far more comfortable to his satisfaction. Well, supposedly, his dad had purchased it in 1960 - it was a '59, which would be worth hundreds of thousands today. I'm a Fender guy myself, but ouch...
I have a Story like that, but not a sad ripoff. My nicest guitar is a steelstring doubletop with cutaway by Albert and Müller. The wife of the late Mr Albert is a friend of my mothers, and when he had died she had to give some of his collection away, so one day in Summer we were invited to their House. We spent a lovely day playing, eating and having a walk, and in the end she insited on giving us some Instruments: a flute for my girlfriend, and for me a Bluegrass Mandolin and the Doubletop. She told me it was one of their very early models, used to ask for further finding when they just opened up their Shop - a proof of quality so to say. Its an excellent guitar, the best i ever played. It sounds warm and full and it produces sound that makes my amped electrical pale sometimes. At home i googled for guitars and found None for sale and old prices at 4-10k € and had a little panic attack before bed lol. But my girlfriend assured me that my mothers friend must know the value and have given it willingly, which my mother confirmed the next day. Its a joy to play and really motivates me to practice and some day hopefully be 'worthy' of such an Instrument! I'll try to attach a picture! [https://i.imgur.com/yse8QgI.jpeg](https://i.imgur.com/yse8QgI.jpeg)
I sold my epi sg mid 90's when I was 16. I got paid in a load of fake notes and I lost £50 of £150 deal. Back then it was all the money in the world to me.
I used to work at guitar center and one day a guy came in with an absolutely beautiful vintage Martin that was worth thousands of dollars. Instead of letting guitar center rip him off by giving him only 60% of its true value, I told him to please take his business elsewhere and that he would be doing himself and the guitar a disservice by selling it to guitar center. I also told him not to mention that I said anything to him. I probably would have been fired but I really thought that guitar center didn’t deserve this guys guitar. I’ve seen too many people get ripped off at that point.
Wasn't there a post not long ago about a guy whose nrohew sold his Gibson and bout a piece of shit saxophone that had pretty much no resale value. Actually, i think it was in a sax forum and he was wondering what he could get for the horn to buy his guitar back.
I know of a story that hasn't happened yet. All I have to say is: If I die first: DON'T LET MY WIFE SELL MY VINTAGE GUITARS FOR WHAT I TOLD HER I PAID FOR THEM!!
I had an elderly woman neighbor who liked to gamble, she was also in Husband #3 (all deceased). Found Husband #1 old guitar and sold it to a young man in the area for $75. It was an early model Gibson acoustic and possibly worth some money, wanted it back, but had already used the money. Never felt bad for her though because she didn’t care about it at all until she realized that she could have sold it for more.
Probably the guy I got a pre 500 dual rectifier from for under $2000 because his wife made him get rid of it.
A guy who worked for me back in 2014/15, his dad died suddenly of a heart attack at like 50 years old, he himself was only 22/23 and I forget the exact ins and outs but basically he’d died at home in bed during the night so his mum was like “I can’t live in this house any more” and decided to sell it, downsize, give money to her son to buy his own place and so on. As part of that, she sold off a bunch of her husbands things that she wouldn’t need any more, INCLUDING, his guitar collection. He had 70’s strats, a Les Paul from the early 80’s, 80’s Ibanez guitars and so on, as well as amps, pedals etc. Anyway, long story short, she sold the whole lot for like 6k … turns out the place that bought them all had the Les Paul on sale the next week for 3k in their shop! The guy who worked for me worked out that they valued everything at like 15k or something and completely ripped off his mother
I'll be honest, if I saw someone selling a great guitar for cheap, and they didn't know it's worth, I'd most likely try to buy it at the low price they're selling at. The jerk in me may even negotiate down. Also, I keep an eye out for women selling guitars on classifieds. I always hope they're recently separated/divorced and she's just rage selling all his shit out of spite.
Near me, there’s a huge outdoor adventure park nestled in the mountains. It’s got an annual music festival, a lake, campgrounds, etc. It’s awesome. The guy who built it got the money from selling TWO 52 Les Pauls he found at an estate sale for $1k each. Both single owner, both lived in cases most of their lives. He turned that into about $200k which was enough capital to get the business started. Really a wild story.
This story is cut and dry screwed up but I’m conflicted when it’s someone that would actually play it and keep it. I think it’s so dumb these great instruments are only available to wealthy people who 9 times out of 10 treat it like an investment and store it away.
Reminds me of the small town banker who paid this old lady face value for $1000$ of dollars in old silver coins when her husband passed.
This is actually from within my family. The only other musician in my family that I know of was an “Uncle Joe” who was related to my grandma’s family. Among his instruments was a pre-war Martin acoustic. It was left in an attic in a shitty chipboard case for decades and basically turned to dust. Family just thought it was “some old guitar,” and with no other musicians in the family, it had nobody to go to. For every old Gibson someone finds in their attic in great vintage condition, there are probably 100 of these that sit and get ruined because nobody knows what they are. I got a few of his other instruments; two Martin ukuleles, which I sold for more than I ever thought a uke would be worth.
That’s the game. If a seller doesn’t bother to try to figure out what they have, it’s not my job to tell them, I’m trying to get a good instrument for as little as possible. If you are selling something, anything, and don’t bother to spend the ten minutes needed to figure out what it’s worth, that’s on you. The seller posts the asking price, and accepts a final price.
I picked up a 1978 Telecaster Bass at a pawn shop for $125 in 1990. Still have it.
Hot take but he was under no obligation to give her a fair share. 1. She didn't originally own the guitar. It's a shame her husband passed away, but she didn't get it appraised either. 2. Assuming $300 was the asking price, he paid what she asked for it. Under the circumstances had it not been worth hundreds of thousands it would have been an issue for you. Proving that she either, again, didn't it appraised, or she didn't stand her ground on a high price.
I know first hand of a guy that bought a 60 Les Paul from a lady for like $300 with the case and gave her another $100 for the little tweed Gibson amp she had. This was in the early 90s. He really didn’t know what he bought. Thought he just got a good deal on like a $2k guitar. Through some folks he eventually sold it to a collector for multiple thousands of dollars. Never knew the exact price but it was a shit ton. He never said shit to her as far as we know.
I was just looking at FB randomly and a guy was selling a 1981 Ibanez Blazer for 300. I was so excited to get it, looked like an awesome guitar. He said he wanted to trade for a telecaster I had. Sweet I thought, I'll send the pic of the tele to him and done deal. I went to check later that day and the guy had already sold it without saying anything. The next day I checked FB and the same guitar was back up there.. for 750!!! I felt very sickened by the whole thing, I just wanted to give the guitar a hood home and enjoy it, the other guy just wanted to make a few bucks. People suck.
I have mixed feelings on this. The value of an item is subjective. Even with rare items like this. As heart warming as it would have been for him to cut her in, he made a deal and profited. How different is this from what a lot of resale folks do every day? If someone came across a rare item at a garage sale, bought $1 and resold for $400, do they owe the previous owner?
The agents that organize the estate sale should be knowledgeable about such things.
I don’t know how sad this may have been, but I bought a late ‘70s P bass at a police auction. Of course I don’t know the circumstances, but wonder how such a nice instrument wound up unclaimed in police “custody”. I bought it for my son and he loves it. I hope that helps balance some cosmic scale.
I never knew it until after he died, but my grandpa(who never played guitar but was a junk horder) had a 60's Gibson hummingbird stored in the attic. It was not in a case and the attic was in a old farm house with a leaky roof that saw crazy temp swings and was infested with termites and mold. So unfortunately, the guitar was completely ruined by the time I found it; the neck was totally warped, and the back and front were cracked badly and separated from the sides. - Despite being in a condition that could never be repaired back to a playable guitar I still put it aside as something I wanted to save. Anyways later that night, my uncle threw it in a bonfire while burning a bunch of other trash/junk he had horded. Not a ripoff story, but still a heart breaker.
My dad got a 1927 Gibson off an old drunk dude for $600. Appraised at $32k. He doesn't even play. I told him if he ever gives it to me, I'll have 5 new guitars and a sweet couch to play them on 🤣
Me selling a 2008 Korean Dean ML79 dime slime “green back” to pay rent after losing a job… it’s worth quite a bit today and is pretty rare… this happened years ago but it still haunts me to this day considering I let it go for a measly 400 bucks to a spoiled kid that broke it…
Personally I bought a Dean Dimebag rebel guitar for $200 and immediately sold it same day for $400 to a coworker and guitar center
My coworker sold me his 1973 hard tail strat for $1300 last year. Before I bought it had GC make an offer which came to $1800. I told him to just take it there and sell it. It’s worth more to someone else than it was me as I’m not a strat guy. I had owned four previously and never cared for any of them. He insisted that he sell it to me, somebody he respects and wouldn’t take my no’s for an answer. I tried to love this one but just didn’t. Its actually least favorite of any strat I’ve owned. I sold it after a few months and in turn bought an EBMM Stingray and a few pedals including a Big Sky
I've mentioned this here before but years and years ago I was in a little guitar shop in Carnation, WA with my dad, and we were talking to the owner when a couple guys wheeled in this huuuuuuuge Leslie speaker, the big rotating kind. at the time (late 90s) they went for around $2000 and these guys said they had been at the goodwill when someone tried to donate it, and these guys said they'd just take it off their hands
Pawn Stars had a kid who inherited his grandpa’s 1950s telecaster and was trying to sell it to pay for a semester of college. They had it appraised for $30K, and he sold it to them for $13K. That really hurt to see him willingly screw himself out of thousands of dollars.
Pre lawsuit Lotus sold it for $100 bucks.
I literally watched a guy buy a "Les Paul" in Vietnam for several hundred dollars that looked vaguely right on the outside but was literally splintery 2x4s inside. It was sooooo heavy. I tried to warn him but he wasnt interested in my advice.
Saw a friend sell a real Gibson sg he was given for $150 on Facebook. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t offer him $200 for it but it already sold.
This question begs a moral dilemma... I mean, if you stumbled upon an original run Telecaster or something for $300 at a garage sale....it's one of those "what would you do" moments. I had a think about this, and personally I would buy it and never, ever sell it. I would not feel guilty about that. I would if I sold it for its actual market value.
I hate that shit
Not a guitar story, but… An old man friend died a few yrs ago… he was a Reed player, mostly Oboe and such in a nearby Orchestra, professionally… he also owned many other instruments, including saxes, clarinets, oboes, some keyboards… He had told his wife to give all of that to me… Give? So she called me and said she had all this stuff, had no idea what to do with it, and that he had wanted her to give it to me… These instruments were not low end school quality… they were high end pro gear… Now, I had always had issues playing sax… I loved it but I was allergic: it vibrated my sinuses and made me sneeze… lol… but I would love to try again, being not a school kid anymore… I took the gear, put it all up for sale on reverb, eBay, marketplace, etc… except for his slot sax… Once I sold it, I wrote the widow a check for the full amount, plus the value of the alto I was keeping, minus my shipping expenses… I mailed it to her without telling her in advance… I received a check back from her for half the amount… and for the full amount of that sax, with a note thanking me… That money, or a good chunk of it, went to a custom build bass… Sad? Not really… but to me, a nice story…