The September issue of “Vintage Guitar News and Views”
Going back forwards
Well, with the cost of everything going up, just how far up is the high going to be ? No one knows this answer, but I feel that everything is just hideously expensive. I mean 18 K for a car? 250 K for a home? Shoes, shirts, 30 to 50 bucks a pop, This is ludicrous, and vintage guitars ?sheeze, gimme a break, I mean the average you and I can’t afford sweet old vintage gear ,that’s just a fact, So ,is all this out of kilter ? All askew? There will always be people willing to pay more and more for collectibles and that forces the average guy or girl out of the price game, other than a lucky break here and there stumbling on a sweet guitar at a reasonable price. I mean I do understand that 1962 (picked at random) is gone and will never come again and even though a guitar can be made today exactly like that sweet old girl, the same weight, color, feel, tone, It could be vastly inferior or vastly superior to the original or the original itself could be crap, but, there lies the crux. “The original 1962.” Original 1962 guitars are only made in 1962, never before, never again!
So if everyone wants a 1962 era guitar and only so many were originally made, we then enter the world of supply and demand, which in turn factors the pricing index’s, which fuels the ever increasing in prices for a limited supply of goods with over market saturation of demand regardless of whether ¾ of the consumers wanting the item can even afford it. The desire is there and that in turn adds more fuel to the fire. So Greg, what’s you’re point? I don’t really know, except that price fluctuations will always occur within a market and that prices will always rise on the long run as long as there is a limited supply of goods , especially one that is sought after , often duplicated, can even be replicated , but never fully actually authenticated as a time period correct piece. Even if every detail is correct, but the actual manufacturing date is in the past, never to be revisited again, and I guess that is where the mystique of it all lies, today is gone, never to return and somehow tomorrow just isn’t the same. Well that is until the day after tomorrow. So today’s bargains may just very well be tomorrows collectibles that we can afford to buy. Just some food for thought and something for you to digest. As always this is just my news and views, so may all your days be memorable, all your friends be true and all your riffs be killer, Till next month, Greg at Greg’s guitars .Greg's guitars