my question is what is the market now? yeah, we all know in the early 90s, one could pick up a 60's jag from a pawn shop for a few hundred bucks/quid, but some underground bands making it big kinda let that cat out of the bag. and then ebay monkey stomped that cat so all you find at pawn shops are fernandes and samick. i have to imagine it doesn't help that the blues lawyer class are hoovering up inventory cos for them guitars are like pokemon/baseball cards/pogs -- just a box to be checked on a personal treasure hunt.
and when i take a step back to the OP, that's a 42-year-old instrument. how many of those do we think are left just lying around? putting that into perspective, i remember aug's '64 mustang back in the 05 - 06 era, which at the time would have been in the same age range as this musicmaster. iirc, it was fair-to-good condition (there were some switch issues, and the paint was not immaculate though pretty good for the age), and i wanna say he ended up selling it for something in the $1500 range.
i guess what i am saying is we might also need to update our expectations for what vintage gear from different eras should cost. maybe this guy is a bill or two high (which is not even 12%), but let's not forget all the major gear makers have been ratcheting up prices the last five years, so that's going to push the used market up eventually.
makes me wish I'd of bought all that trash up when it was cheap, though I'm sentimental about my stuff so I'd probably hoard it all anyway unless I really got a stinker.
but still hurts seeing 70's fenders go for that much, I know there was good shit then but it just makes the 50's and 60's stuff go for more.
reissue/indie guitar brand game so strong though now that who fucking cares too. idk how to feel about it all, I'm at the point like roober where I'll probably just build a tele from GFS if I get the itch for some new shit, or mod out a squier, they got the heat now.
The same happened to the 70s Gibsons in the 2010s. In the late 2000s when I joined guitar forums they were considered garabage by everyone and you could buy Norlin era guitars for under $1000 on ebay. People posting photos of them got the "Eww" reaction and advice to get rid of them and to buy "a normal 60s guitar". These days the prices trippled because the 60s stuff went through the roof.
Everything, absolutely everything that is old and that is guitar will become more and more expensive in one way or other
Nick wrote:You could buy several vintage professional level Yamahas just as old and just as nice of condition for the price of that one student level guitar.
Give it a couple of years.
Actually old and overlooked guitars are a great commodity if you're patient enough to wait a decade to resell them
Nick wrote:You could buy several vintage professional level Yamahas just as old and just as nice of condition for the price of that one student level guitar.
Give it a couple of years.
Actually old and overlooked guitars are a great commodity if you're patient enough to wait a decade to resell them
it’s true. So many Harmony Bobkats I’ve passed up at $150 to $200 10 years ago, then St Vincent made them popular and now they’re $500-$700. Same goes for $300-$400 Hagstroms that are now $700-$800. Of course inflation also plays a part in that as well.
Still kicking myself for not buying the “ridiculously expensive� $2,200 Jupiter 8 we got in back when I worked at Guitar Center. Or the beautiful refinished white/tort 63 Jazzmaster for $3,000 that sat on the wall for years.
I don't like it either, it's just the way it is going. In 5 years $2500 might become a standard price for your Bronco. And yes, I agree with you on the cheeky attitude that the guitar stores (reverb) that sell all things vInTAgE have adopted.
I don't think that any guitar ever made is worth more than $3000 - $4000. I think the people who buy 1958 Les Pauls for $70 000 are fucking idiots, but they will probably resell them in 20 years for half a million. It has nothing to do with music, playing music and rock'n'roll, but will flourish regardless
Who wants my green bronco for 2500?
Its 2500 because I say it is
that's pretty much how it works. if you find someone willing to pay that, the value has been established.
and, to nick's point, regardless of quality, there are brands that just hold and build value better than others. leo fender may never have been a guitarist himself, but he aligned his brand with the SoCal music scene right on time, and that alone was enough to build the mojo legend. justified or not, it's what we got.
and what's cool is the spendy-ness of fenders and gibsons leads people to seek out alternatives. my brother was in the market for a lefty electric for his 13yo son (my nephew) and ended up finding a hagstrom super cheap cos fender is a bag of dicks to lefty guitarists.