What is a 1964 A-50 worth?

[john_kidder]

Hear, hear, Smiert. Death also to them what drastically overprice guitars.

 

[marcellis]

"A-50's are interesting basic guitars, but I sure wouldn't be putting much money into one."

Living in Vietnam, I can get high quality restoration work done on guitars for $200-300. I'm always looking for "Project" Guilds
to buy & restore.

Problem is, the shipping costs eat away any conceivable price advantage to Western luthiers. I can ship via container very cheap. But if an owner lives in New York and the container arrives in Tampa, who is responsible for getting it from here to there?

Who wants to ship a vintage guitar in a hot, iron container anyway?
That leave EMS mail - forget it. $250-350 and it's almost always late. And it's always untraceable. EMS here goes through Bangkok. And you can imagine how high a priority Thais assign to Vietnamese mail.

That leaves the couriers, DHL, Fed-Ex, UPS. Cost: $350-450/3 days, on-time, always traceable. Now you add that up both ways, plus the price of restoration and what do you have?

Zanzi's archtop is nice. But I already have a really nice, hand-made Mahogany archtop. I just put an Ebony tailpiece on it a few weeks ago.