Here's my tale...
I started learning guitar when I was 10, on a "Stella" flat top... $17 used with the tone of plywood and mile high strings. After a year of lessons, my instructor told my folks I needed a better guitar, so I received a cherry red Harmony "Rocket" electric for my 11th birthday.
I got my first "real" job at 17, working in a lab at the med school in Portland,OR. I told my folks that, as soon as I had saved my first $1,000 for college, the next paycheck was going to buy a new acoustic guitar.
So, In January of 73 I set out on my quest... looked at Gibsons and Epiphones in half a dozen shops... and didn't find anything that sang to me. Then, hanging on the wall in a little shop on N Burnside in Portland were three Guilds... The flat-backed all mahogany D25 was a little over my "budget" ($225 w/o case), the D35 even higher ($265 w/o case), and the third (which I now think was a D40) was way out of my reach. I played the D25 and was ready to buy.. UNtil I tried the D35. Once I played it, I was hooked... that guitar just sang to me. I went home empty handed the first trip... thought about it, and what my folks would say about my spending more than a month's pay on a guitar. But I went back and payed the $265 in cash and brought the D35 home on the bus two days later. At the time, that was the most money I had ever carried in my pocket. I couldn't afford the hardshell case, so the shop loaned my a pasteboard case until my next paycheck. The final bill with a Guild hardshell was $300... which was a lot of money for a 17 year old kid in 1973. When my dad found out how much I has spent, he about went ballistic.
I still have that Guild D35... it's been with me through thick and thin (college, a couple girl friends, my first marriage)... suffering some abuse along the way (I cringe to think of the way I treated it in my youth). It still has an incredible voice... warm and bright at the same time. I think it is still my most verstatile guitar, sounding great in any tuning, either finger picked or strummed.
After all these years, I think my Dad has forgiven me for my youthful extravagance.