This Seller $ucks

http://cgi.ebay.com/Guild-1997-Blac...84?cmd=ViewItem&pt=Guitar&hash=item2a0768a8bc

Check out the rest of his auctions. :x
M

Just discussed over here:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=19142
8)

Agreed - and I can't imagine that the parts separately are worth more than if the guitar was complete. The fact that they're not "vintage" parts (please tell me the '90's aren't vintage yet) makes it even more puzzling.

It's bad enough ya gotta worry about any Fender being a Frankenstein, but now the set neck guitars are going to be the same way.

Jeff Haddad said:

Agreed - and I can't imagine that the parts separately are worth more than if the guitar was complete.

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As noted in the other thread, the seller thinks otherwise. It remains to be seen whether the BINs are achieved.

capnjuan said:

The sum of the BINs for the parts including the case is +/- $1,300. I can't tell if this one had a Bigs or not but the market for the good condition RI SFs, excluding the 335-style, runs $900-$1,200 ...

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thats so sad !!!

I miss the words to express what I feel

most guitars are worth more dead than alive.

I had a friend in the biz that was doing the same thing in the 80's 90's

made a ton of bucks

I mean no offense to anyone by the following comment. But I've noticed quite a change on e-Bay (what stuff goes for) and also here on LTG in the attitude and purchasing habits of guitar buyers towards used and vintage guitars since my interest was rekindled in 2006. I see an increasing preference for the cleanest guitars and increasing disdain for guitars with cosmetic issues, minor modifications or prior repairs.

It's not the end of the world, of course. But one result is that a lot of Hoboken archtops are being parted out (and now even a reissue 90's Starfire), way more than when I started following e-Bay four years ago. It's happening because buyers are avoiding the player-condition instruments. All it takes is a headstock repair (even the cleanest headstock repair), or some missing binding, or similar issue and that guitar becomes vulnerable to the chop shop because its market value is so severely compromised. Could be a vintage SF III or SF IV or a T-100, CE-100, X-50, T-50, M-65, it does not matter. Certainly I'm generalizing, but the market is currently willing to pay only $650 to $800 for those instruments. The vintage parts, plus the stripped out body, are worth more than that.

It's not something I wanted to see happen, due to the soft spot in my heart for the Hoboken stuff. But it's increasingly the chop-shoppers who are winning the auctions and paying the BIN for the bargain guitars. And then it's off with the parts, said the Queen of Hearts.

Well that sucks., :twisted: :roll: Steffan

It's regretable that it's history repeating itself.

In the seventies old Tele's were just old guitars, and I once bought a completrely stripped Les Paul Custom for about the same price ($200) and added whatever parts I could find. Eventually it wound up with early EMG pickups.

Then for a time you couldn't give away a Les Paul because everybody was into Strats, and even terrible CBS Strats were selling. Then after a while the Strats too, fell from favor and were disassembled to complete other more marketable or even counterfeit versions, at the beginnings of the vintage/collectable rumblings by famous stars who were stashing them away.

Then the "vintage market" began to build up steam and magazines educated us slobs, which helped preserve "all original" guitars (again, so rich guys could keep them away from us, economically).

Unfortunately, it seems our beloved Guilds are presently occupying that "just an old guitar" status. People have not yet begun to see them as esteem-able American icons worthy of respect in all original form. So the hacks are disassembling future museam pieces.

I'm afraid that a society ruled by capitalism and factory made guitars to supply demand has a lag -before even an old factory production guitar, of which thousands were made- gain the status of a Stradivarious violin. Nothing less seems to matter until the rich curators start buying them up to protect them for future generations, and/or the Smithsonian notices.

Pity.

It cuts both ways apparently. I remember Ry Cooder and David Lindley bemoaning that even the cheap guitars they went to as a hedge against inflation and the "vintage market" crazyness were getting expensive.

You and I may think it's criminal to part out our favorite brands, and judge these people as short sighted. However in Capitalism the law of the jungle prevails. Not that I would prefer some other system.

It's kinda like driving slow past a highway wreck to look at these auctions. Tsk tsk. I remember my mom saying, "Don't look kids!"

I always wish I hadn't looked.

Good points.

I wish there was a strong enough demand at the end-user/player level for the guitars under discussion here. Even though we've seen links on here to some fairly hip contemporary musicians using beat-up vintage Guild Starfires and T-100's, the kids aren't buying the affordable ones and neither are the geezer GAS'ers.

My T-100 has a repaired headstock crack, but it's a beautiful guitar and a wonderful player. And it was a killer bargain. It's one of my favorite guitars. But I'll also admit that I wouldn't want a complete collection of guitars with repaired headstocks.

The coolest thing to me about the Hoboken archtops is that they seem to be almost universally structurally sound, absolutely ready to take a good set up and play great. The cosmetics are so secondary when you have that level of function in a 40-year old instrument. But there is a strong loss of vibe when the old Guild has all new Gibson-style (read cheap) parts.

I must also admit that I happened to purchase the original rosewood bridge of the SF II part-out that motivated this thread. It was the first thing the guy listed. $40 and I bought it. Better priced than the rest of his stuff. So, okay, I did it before it was apparent that he was doing a complete part out, but I'm still guilty, guilty, guilty of supporting the trend.

But there must be a market for these parts, which you would have to assume people are using them to bring Guilds back to their original specs. So maybe one parted out Guild saves one or maybe more Guilds...

Kind of going through the same thought process with the 67 Gretsch. I could replace all the hardware with new stuff, and it would look good, but that would decrease it's collectibility, and I think most folks desire the mojoed parts on a structurally sound and playable guitar. Right now I'm looking for a vintage Grover Imperial tuner, and I'm having trouble finding one. I've found an auction for four of them, and I think the seller might sell a single one. But I'm tempted to buy all four for luck, because they seem hard to find. And try and find one with the mid 60s kidney bean tuner keys...

clean always sells in any collectible.
once it has an issue then you get what you can get.

Yes, there is a strong market for the parts, although I don't think they're going as high as they were a couple years ago when a vintage Guild Bigsby B-2 would consistently fetch $300 on e-Bay.

But it's really a very marginal gain in some cases, as CJ and others have pointed out on the other thread about this Starfire II part out. I think they are correct in assessing that this seller won't gain much by parting out the guitar, compared to selling it whole. It's going to wind up being a silly exercise because e-Bay sellers are not going to get over by parting out undamaged 90's archtops.

You may be right, Effin, that the vintage parts wind up in worthy projects. Certainly, that happens a lot.

guildzilla said:

...I'm still guilty, guilty, guilty of supporting the trend.

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I don't agree that YOU are guilty of ANYTHING, unless you had the means to buy everything and put it all together (taking a loss in the process) and it wouldn't hurt you, and you just said "F'it, not my problem." Then slagged on some other guy who didn't either.

And even then no jury in the world would convict you.

No, this is the seller's bad value system. But still, it's a free country.

Sometimes it's hard to have "the eye of the beholder," and not have the resources to do anything about it.

Scott Chinery had the ways and means, and did a lot of guitar saving. Through it all I just thought he was some rich dude. But he saw to it that the instruments could be played, and not just stashed in a dusty closet somewhere. My bad for thinking less of him, at the time.

We need him back and educated to our value system concerning Guilds!

I'm definitely in the all-original camp and only once have made any modifications to one of my guitars -- a MIM Fender Strat that I replaced the single-ply white plastic pickguard on. However, less-than-clean is not so much a drawback for me as is original. You really can't expect a guitar that's nearly 40 years old, or older, to be in very clean condition unless it hasn't been played in years and/or was refinished, and at that point, it isn't original anymore.

That being said, I see nothing for Guildzilla to be guilty about. After all, we're first and foremost players, and if we find a guitar that plays well and sounds good, isn't that the point, regardless of whether it has prior scratches and dings or replacement parts?

guildzilla said:

I see an increasing preference for the cleanest guitars and increasing disdain for guitars with cosmetic issues, minor modifications or prior repairs.

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This is typical of and expected from a market dominated by collectors. Condition, completeness and originality are what is important, not utility. We at LTG revisit this divide often and under many guises. Pretty much every discussion of prices can be broken down into the collectors on one side and the players on the other. Ditto for discussions on the ethics of parting, although the sides are not nearly so consistent there. There is often a sneer of sour grapes involved because, for the most part the collectors have the money and drive the market and the players get vocally frustrated because not only can they not afford many instruments but the ones that get away are perceived to remain unloved and unplayed.

Personally I'd rather see an instrument restored than parted but I understand that sometimes restoring an instrument makes absolutely no economic sense. In that case I can at least hope the parts go to restoring another instrument.

This Seller $ucks

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Sucks rhino.

To see it from the seller's perspective - he might come out with the same amount of money, or even a little less - but chances are better of selling little pieces than one large guitar, given the current economy. Plus, think of all the positive feedback he's getting with the piecemeal auctions, versus just one feedback with the whole guitar.

Well I bought the Guild bigsby at a reasonable $129. It sure seems like a lot of work for the price difference between a whole guitar and parts.

M

Ammendment: I'm Lazy. I was actually thinking about all the extra packing, shipping and auctions. Well his prices are reasonable for the parts so he is providing a needed service.

matsickma said:

...seems like a lot of work for the price difference between a whole guitar and parts...

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Likely a power screwdriver in use.

Congrats on the Bigsby!