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Post by Ripper on May 4, 2006 14:32:41 GMT -5
I read an article today I found interesting...
It seems that alot of vintage instruments are bought up by collectors. These guys dont even know how to play, they merely see an old Les Paul or Stratocaster etc, as an investment. They mention this one millionaire...who they dont name. He bought a mint 59 Les Paul. He has it hung up in a special room and plays loud music with the speaker drivers aimed at the guitar. It says he wants to vibrate the wood ( from the music ) so the wood cells are tightly fused together. The Stradavarious of guitars so to speak!
Some people have far too much money.
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Post by pollyshero on May 4, 2006 21:58:18 GMT -5
I'm trying to thing of something suitably snippy to say to that, but I just can't come up with anything...
I can only hope that he paid WAAAAYYYY to much for the 'paul, and that he'll never be able to sell it for profit. If we're all lucky he'll die without a will & the state will auction the guitar off for relative peanuts to a musician who will promptly plug it in and "ruin" it by playing it until the frets are pitted and the finish wears through.
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Post by Runewalker on May 4, 2006 22:37:05 GMT -5
This phenomena of (some) Boomer's now being rich enough to ruin the feasibility of actual players obtaining the classic instruments is what drove me to this obsession of building and experimenting with wiring options.
I have mentioned before that I have a couple of old Gibson's bought at marker rates at the time that look silly now. The Les Paul was getting fret worn, and I shopped for one to spell it. The new ones were ridiculous, the old ones were worse. I finally researched the ages on both, and now, because of this collector's ponzi scheme I can't play them with abandon any longer, and admit it, that's just wrong!
So I taught myself to build, well really assemble, set up and dial in, guitars, then found this place and was ruined forever. Have a lot of players, none of which cost more than $200, and I can play without worry of a nick or scratch. The way it's supposed to be.
These collectors did the same to great old muscle cars. GTOs were always a little pricey in the aftermarket, but not this $50-100k Stuff. Malibus used to be so cheap, now restored ones are more expensive than new cars. Hot rod cars and guitars and gals that love the drivers and players. Now we're talking.
In this same vein of how collectors who don't play have introduce gross distortions into our world, I was in Vega (on business, now) and stopped in a guitar shop (or so I thought) in the mall next to the hotel. Turns out it was one of those 'collectibles' stores, selling cheap @ss (as in poor quality) Asian guitars that someone had shoved under famous and vaguely famous "stars" to autograph. The proprietor was bragging about her inventory, and told a shocking story where she was serving a customer, and heard strumming in the back of the store. She rushed over and whisked a cheap @ss, marked up 'guitar' out of the hands of someone who was strumming it, with the admonition, "Sir, these are COLLECTIBLE instruement that may NOT be played." She was quite worked up and incensed in retelling the story.
The whole phenomena just bugs me.
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Post by dunkelfalke on May 5, 2006 2:31:51 GMT -5
just let them i think nothing justifies an electric guitar that is more expensive than, say, €600. for that money you can already have a custom made one.
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Post by sumgai on May 5, 2006 13:14:31 GMT -5
<sigh> Yep, the stores related so far are all true. It gets worse. I'm not the first to express the wonder that there were only so many Strats made in 1957, but for some strange reason, about twice as many of them have been sold on eBay. Now I don't know about you, but where I come from, the simple arithmetic I learned says that either each 57 Strat ever made has been bought and sold twice in the last few years, or else there's something "vewy scwewy going on here". Genuine collector shops like Norm's and Gruhn's live in fear of being taken for a ride by forgeries. They won't come right out and say it, but if you read between the lines, they know that there is no way (short of carbon dating) to tell the difference between the real thing and the products of some of the world's finest craftsmen. Hell's Bells, there's even a website that tells you how to make your stuff look aged. ( www.reranch.com) I don't know about Wolf's 600 euro price limit, but I do know that the market is not going to get any better. I'll tell you my personal criterion for making a purchase. If I see it, and perhaps play it, and then I put it down and walk away..... and if I wake up three nights later, shaking like a leaf, ready to swear on a stack of Bibles that the thing is calling my name in the middle of the night, then I consider going back for a second look. Otherwise, I can build whatever I want, no questions asked. Something that is overpriced has to not only call my name, it had better have hot and cold running women installed too! ;D sumgai
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Post by Runewalker on May 5, 2006 15:47:13 GMT -5
<sigh> ... but I do know that the market is not going to get any better. sumgai Actually, I suspect this will go the way of many collector markets, in that they all have a certain trajectory influenced by both rarety (supply) and demand. On the demand side you have a huge bubble of aging hippies now with wealth who pursue their youthful fantasies. But like converted fourties and 30's autos, whose value rose than fell, or like the rise in muscle car values cited earlier, these markets have trajectories. I actually am, like many, trying to devine if we have topped out. Where is the point to sell at max value? Any seerers or oracles here. I suspect at some point the values will decline, probably when those boomers can no longer heft the 10lb LP they paid too much for.
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Post by sumgai on May 6, 2006 13:02:44 GMT -5
Rune, I respectfully disagree. The trajectories you proclaim are not rooted properly in historical inflationary trends, they are limited in their scope. One needs to consider the overall wealth of the economy, the level of disposable income of the middle class (at a given time in history), the reason for a rush of popularity (reversion to childhood memories is but one of many), as well as the utility of the articles in consideration. Older cars? Can't drive them anymore, no more spare parts to be had anywhere. If you can't fabricate them yourself, your baby is gonna sit on blocks forever. Ditto for WWI and WWII planes (and even ships!), no more ability to keep them running. Not so with Barbie dolls, Coca-Cola bottles and guitars. They can be kept running indefinitely, so to speak. (Meaning, they can be used for their orginal purpose without undue stress to their owners.) The law of supply and demand is the driving factor, as I believe you said. That is why I referred to the problem of forgeries. I'm sure you could, and I know I could, build a pretty convincing forgery with off-the-shelf parts. It may not pass Gruhn's inspection, but the average eBayer would not be able to tell the difference. That's the problem to which I refer. Whether the buyers are aging hippies with too much money, aging rock stars with too little sense, or whomever, as long as they are not astute in their purchasing decisions, there will be a market for forgeries, and that market will continue to drive up the prices, not down. Not until the vast majority of buyers have learned their lessons will the forgeries stop, and the prices become more reasonable. Which brings me back full circle - what's a reasonable price? It can easily take a full generation, or longer, to bring prices back in line. But by that time, inflation has taken a big bite out of the world's economy, and the raw figure of X dollars has no meaning unless it is referenced to the year of the original purchase (which I'm sure you'll agree almost never happens). It's all about purchasing power, and the baby boomers have what we consider a glut of it, comparatively speaking. But a closer look at history shows this to be untrue. There has always been a class of retired and near-retired people with more than average disposable income (or savings) that can, and do, drive up the market for a given set of items. Want another example? (Hey, glad you asked! Take model railroading. There are mighty few individuals alive today that worked for their living on the railroads of yore. But to watch the prices of model stuff, you'd think you were observing the London Gold Exchange in a frenzy - this market is incredibly stupid about values!!!!! So who's doing all this buying? Those who have been inculcated by some facet of history, or their innate love of things mechanical, or perhaps they have a tenuous family connection, way back in history, or perhaps they're just victims of good marketing practices. Does it matter? No, they're happy, so let them have at it. You and I don't care if they spend their kids' inheritance, right? Ditto for the guitar market. I'd wager that about 0.00000000005 percent of us have a valid connection with the history of the guitar, but many, many of us act like we were personally responsible for Jimi Hendrix..... and we're willing to pay whatever to prove it! That's what makes the market so crazy for us. We, you and I and most other 'Nutz here, we know that we just want to play a guitar, that we're not such hot potatoes. But we're locked out of doing that by virtue of guitar-player-wannabes that couldn't tell a piece of mahogany from a solder joint. It is for those <expletive deleted> that forgeries are made. ....... ....... ....... Hmmm, I seem to have gone off the deep end here. I'd better chop this off right now, and go outside and get some fresh air. I'll check back to see what you think, later today. ;D sumgai
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Post by Runewalker on May 6, 2006 16:35:27 GMT -5
SG:
We actually don't disagree. Markets are markets and there probably be some level of demand for these instruments, possibly a high level. I was just noting a certain fashion and fickleness in collector markets.
Perhaps a better example oif fickelness is Beanie Babies. Huge insane marketing driven push under the guise they would be collectible. The bloom fades and TY had flooded supply. As a marketing case study it was brilliant - Ty made money hand over foot. As a sustained collector market, futz. (any one interested in my daughter's BB collectibles? cheap!). My Mom collected glassware, placesettings etc, and different issues had their moment in the fashion sun.
I was merely pointing out not that the demand would disappear, but at some point it will peak, and I want to know where that is. Good luck to me. I will be curious to know how the demand sustains itself after the boomers fade (oh, wait, that's me). I look at my daughter's generation and it is not about guitar heros, which drove a lot of the fantasies of our youth, as did cool dudes with muscle cars cruising the boulevard and scoring seemingly easily. (Sting sings .....) "I want my GTO (Goat)!"
One typical sign of a market peaking is when the retail sector enters it as an "investment." I just heard a radio segment where a boomer bragged that his Les Paul collection had been his best investement, beating stocks, bonds and real estate. Come on down to door number one, John Q. Public.
But as Allan Greenspan (I think) said: "Economists should avoid forecasts, especially when it involves the future."
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Post by sumgai on May 6, 2006 17:07:16 GMT -5
Rune, We're on the same page, alright. And I believe it was Greenspan that you quoted, although I can't find the reference at this very moment. <sigh> Moral of all this: value is relative at best, and is a fleeting thing, indeed. Or to quote another famous personage: "There's a sucker born every minute!" But one quote that doesn't work here would be "A fool and his money will soon party!". ;D On a side note, I have a beautiful Stratocaster for sale, cheap! Anybody interested? sumgai
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Post by ChrisK on May 6, 2006 17:54:02 GMT -5
One one hand, they're ain't a "slug of new boomers" coming along interested in the toys of our generation. We're the lucky, we win due to sheer mass (numbers), and being the offspring of those that won the last big war which defined the future for a generation, who had opportunity dumped (and also self-created) fall into our lap. A truly unique time in history. Analogous to the classic car market, many of the "shiny toys" are interesting due to generational preferences. Better be buying up all of that flat black junk from the 90's. A local Music go 'Round had picked up two collections, and one from the 70-80's (hair bands) and one from the 90's (despair bands). I felt the need to pass. (This IS assuming that the following generations will have enough "mass and coin", NOT a foregone event.) Domestic and international population (and power) redistribution is already most far afoot. In many ways, we're living in the "tailwind" of our times. However, I suspect that the defining instruments of the industry such as early Fenders and Gibsons will indeed continue to hold their value for some time. Having had similar luck in participating in the microprocessor revolution, I have many IC's that are the "Broadcasters" of this era. Unfortunately, I haven't seen as much interest in them......
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Post by sumgai on May 6, 2006 23:29:03 GMT -5
Chris, You still have Music-Go-Round in your area?? They all jumped ship here about 5 years ago, give or take. If the owner/operator was on top of things, these were neat stores. But indeed, there were some rotten apples in that particular barrel. Too bad, at least for our area. sumgai
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