The story about receiving the guitar is pretty amazing. I have a friend whose father passed away. He had an INCREDIBLE collection of fine Jazz guitars as he was a huge fan of Chet Atkins. They asked me to drop by and help them with the process of selling a number of these amazing instruments. Just to name a few, there was a Unity 100th Anniversary #1 of 7, Heritage Golden Eagle, a D'Angelico New Yorker (the best playing and sounding of the whole lot), Gretsch Super Chet, a "regular" Gretsch Chet, the list goes on. The thing is they are all Dead Mint. The gentleman just loved guitars and kept them in their cases with humidifiers and took care of them. He did play, but had his beaters and kept the nice ones just to show his firends and friends of friends when they would come to his house to view the "Museum". He held them with a very open hand and told many people that when he passed they could have their pick of the lot. I couldn't believe that these were the guitars left after people had come and picked up their guitars! After giving some advice they asked if I wanted to make an offer on any of them and I said, "Honestly, I couldn't afford to pay you a fraction of what any of these are worth" then his daughter said that she'd like to just let me pick one out since I had already saved them from making a couple poor decisions that honestly would have lost them over $10,000 as a cousin had already taken a few 60's Gretsch guitars to a local consignment shop and stuck them in the window for $1000. Luckily they were able to get them back! I chose the Guild as it was the most practical for me (and honestly on of the lesser expensive out of the lot). She said her Dad just wanted people to appreciate the instruments and play them. I will definitley honor that request.
I'm still in shock after it all. My good friend who was "in the will" chose an amazing Gibson Custom Shop Super Lucille the week prior. Turns out is was one of the Neiman Marcus Limited edition Lucille's made in 2004 to commemorate people struggling with Diabetes. His is #15 of 17 and is probably worth $6-8k. Never played. Simply amazing.
