Guild Dawg
Member
Here’s the Guild 1993 D30 I got off Craigslist the other day down here in Atlanta. I’ll give all the details and y’all can weigh in as to whether it was a good deal or not.
My oldest son announced recently that he wanted to learn how to play guitar (huzzah!) and I have been looking for a good guitar for him to get started on. We went to the local Guitar Center to inspect some likely candidates with an eye toward a new Ibanez or something along that line, since he had about $200 to spend, which my wife and I were planning to augment with no more than about $150.
Dan turned 10 in March but he’s big for his age. Parlor-sized guitars seemed a little small, so we were looking at some concert-sized candidates. He was really drawn to the ones with the dark sunburst coloration. My thoughts were to find him something he thought looked cool so he’d be encouraged to keep playing when the going gets tough.
Nothing at the Guitar Center in the way of used gear was going to be affordable. Canvassing at local shops was also largely unsuccessful (some of the best Atlanta shops dealing in used gear – Galaxy, Midtown Music – recently went out of business). Shopping online on ebay was also not yielding affordable results and Craigslist deals were being scooped out from under me. It was beginning to look like an Ibanez SGT would be the best we could do.
Along comes the listing for a Guild D30 on Craigslist. No details other than “sunburst” and “acc. electric. ” for $650. What I did not notice was that five days before it had listed for $950. I called the guy for more details, like a serial number so I could determine the model and year of manufacture.
After talking with the seller, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue it further. It was a lot more money than I had planned on spending. After the initial phone contact, I didn’t call him back.
About four or five days later, the seller calls me back to ask if I’m still interested in buying the guitar. He’s a roofer/tree service guy who hasn’t worked in a few weeks because of a bad back and needs money. My first thought: motivated seller.
He lives twenty minutes away, but offers to drive to my house right away and show it to me. Wow, I think, REALLY motivated seller!
So he shows up with the D30, which has no case and some surface battle scars (what I like to refer to as “mojo markings”). The first thing I notice is it is EXACTLY the color Daniel wanted (which is not a common coloration for this model, as I understand it). It has a pickup with a strap button jack that I plugged in first thing and WHOA does it fill the room!
Now I have a D25M which I love, but the thought occurs to me perhaps I might keep this D30 and give the boy something else. Nice action, gold Grover tuning machines, pearloid inlaid logo on the headstock that the D25 lacks. But we haven’t talked money yet.
The seller says he got the D30 from a client who wrote him a bad check for services rendered and gave him the guitar to cover the debt. The Craigslist ad asserted it was a “$1,000 guitar,” but it had dings and scratches all over it and the 9V battery powering the pickup is swinging around inside the guitar and there’s no case for it.
“Will you take $550?” I ask. He agrees with an alacrity that suggests I should have offered $500 and says he can scare up a gig bag for it. I tell him I’ve got $150 cash on me and ask where and when I can give him the balance, suggesting we can close the deal tomorrow.
He says he’d really like to get the money today and he’ll take a check if necessary (REALLY REALLY motivated seller!), but he can’t cash the check himself because he doesn’t have an ID card, so maybe I could leave it blank so one of his girlfriends could cash it for him?
After declining that last suggestion, I call my wife who is at work nearby and fill her in on what’s going on and get her to write me a check for the balance of the cash needed. She agrees (I love her so much!). It is now approaching 4 p.m., so I drive to the closest branch of my bank with the tree guy behind me (driving inordinately slow, no doubt because he has no ID and doesn’t want to get stopped by the cops).
We get to the bank just before 4 p.m. and it’s CLOSED! So we drive across town the other way to another branch of my bank and they don’t want to cash the check because it’s more than is currently in my account there. I ask them to make an exception and, since I’ve had an account there 12 years, they relent. Tree guy gets his cash and I tell him to drop off the gig bag at my house whenever he gets a chance (not holding my breath on that one).
I ran the Guild’s serial number on the Internet just to make sure it wasn’t flagged stolen, just because the guy was so eager to unload it. I think he really did just need cash. Maybe I could’ve held him over a barrel and knocked another $50 to $100 off the price, but I think I gave him a fair price and still got a deal. You guys can see the pics and render your own opinions.
My son Daniel saw the guitar this past weekend and was really, really happy with it. I’m going to have a guitar tech fix the pickup issue, clean it up and put some light gauge strings on it. Since it’s been so well-loved (scratched up), I don’t have any qualms about him adding any additional scars to it (within reason).
I’m hoping having a good quality instrument to learn with will spark a lifelong love affair for him with making music. If not, I’m going to make him promise to sell it back to me.
My oldest son announced recently that he wanted to learn how to play guitar (huzzah!) and I have been looking for a good guitar for him to get started on. We went to the local Guitar Center to inspect some likely candidates with an eye toward a new Ibanez or something along that line, since he had about $200 to spend, which my wife and I were planning to augment with no more than about $150.
Dan turned 10 in March but he’s big for his age. Parlor-sized guitars seemed a little small, so we were looking at some concert-sized candidates. He was really drawn to the ones with the dark sunburst coloration. My thoughts were to find him something he thought looked cool so he’d be encouraged to keep playing when the going gets tough.
Nothing at the Guitar Center in the way of used gear was going to be affordable. Canvassing at local shops was also largely unsuccessful (some of the best Atlanta shops dealing in used gear – Galaxy, Midtown Music – recently went out of business). Shopping online on ebay was also not yielding affordable results and Craigslist deals were being scooped out from under me. It was beginning to look like an Ibanez SGT would be the best we could do.
Along comes the listing for a Guild D30 on Craigslist. No details other than “sunburst” and “acc. electric. ” for $650. What I did not notice was that five days before it had listed for $950. I called the guy for more details, like a serial number so I could determine the model and year of manufacture.
After talking with the seller, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue it further. It was a lot more money than I had planned on spending. After the initial phone contact, I didn’t call him back.
About four or five days later, the seller calls me back to ask if I’m still interested in buying the guitar. He’s a roofer/tree service guy who hasn’t worked in a few weeks because of a bad back and needs money. My first thought: motivated seller.
He lives twenty minutes away, but offers to drive to my house right away and show it to me. Wow, I think, REALLY motivated seller!
So he shows up with the D30, which has no case and some surface battle scars (what I like to refer to as “mojo markings”). The first thing I notice is it is EXACTLY the color Daniel wanted (which is not a common coloration for this model, as I understand it). It has a pickup with a strap button jack that I plugged in first thing and WHOA does it fill the room!
Now I have a D25M which I love, but the thought occurs to me perhaps I might keep this D30 and give the boy something else. Nice action, gold Grover tuning machines, pearloid inlaid logo on the headstock that the D25 lacks. But we haven’t talked money yet.
The seller says he got the D30 from a client who wrote him a bad check for services rendered and gave him the guitar to cover the debt. The Craigslist ad asserted it was a “$1,000 guitar,” but it had dings and scratches all over it and the 9V battery powering the pickup is swinging around inside the guitar and there’s no case for it.
“Will you take $550?” I ask. He agrees with an alacrity that suggests I should have offered $500 and says he can scare up a gig bag for it. I tell him I’ve got $150 cash on me and ask where and when I can give him the balance, suggesting we can close the deal tomorrow.
He says he’d really like to get the money today and he’ll take a check if necessary (REALLY REALLY motivated seller!), but he can’t cash the check himself because he doesn’t have an ID card, so maybe I could leave it blank so one of his girlfriends could cash it for him?
After declining that last suggestion, I call my wife who is at work nearby and fill her in on what’s going on and get her to write me a check for the balance of the cash needed. She agrees (I love her so much!). It is now approaching 4 p.m., so I drive to the closest branch of my bank with the tree guy behind me (driving inordinately slow, no doubt because he has no ID and doesn’t want to get stopped by the cops).
We get to the bank just before 4 p.m. and it’s CLOSED! So we drive across town the other way to another branch of my bank and they don’t want to cash the check because it’s more than is currently in my account there. I ask them to make an exception and, since I’ve had an account there 12 years, they relent. Tree guy gets his cash and I tell him to drop off the gig bag at my house whenever he gets a chance (not holding my breath on that one).
I ran the Guild’s serial number on the Internet just to make sure it wasn’t flagged stolen, just because the guy was so eager to unload it. I think he really did just need cash. Maybe I could’ve held him over a barrel and knocked another $50 to $100 off the price, but I think I gave him a fair price and still got a deal. You guys can see the pics and render your own opinions.
My son Daniel saw the guitar this past weekend and was really, really happy with it. I’m going to have a guitar tech fix the pickup issue, clean it up and put some light gauge strings on it. Since it’s been so well-loved (scratched up), I don’t have any qualms about him adding any additional scars to it (within reason).
I’m hoping having a good quality instrument to learn with will spark a lifelong love affair for him with making music. If not, I’m going to make him promise to sell it back to me.
