Has the vintage guitar market crashed in the last 6 months?

[Xpensive Wino]

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[jb_abides]

Get ready for a lot of adjustments.

 

[Xpensive Wino]

Get ready for a lot of adjustments.

 

[Blind Lemon Chicken]

Guitar prices are just ridiculous all the way around not just vintage. There is a glut out there and prices are through the roof, who's buying them ?. beats me..

 

[Amp360]

I was in Nashville last month. I was there almost exactly a year ago to the day. Both times I went to Carter's and a couple of other shops, and a lot of the inventory hadn't changed. I'm not saying nothing has sold, just that I saw a lot of the same things. Some of these stores have a lot of inventory, but I think some make the money off t-shirts and memorabilia. That, or they have a lot of things listed online that don't sell on the floor.

I'm not a guitar collector, but I do own/buy a lot of instruments. Over the past four or five years, I've enjoyed going to some of the better guitar shows and buying there vs buying in stores. I find the deals are better and it's easier to find deals when thirty or forty other vendors sell cool guitars.

I also have more fun going to flea markets and pawn shops and finding many cool stuff, which I try to post about. To me, this is more fun because I don't know what I'll find, and it reminds me more of guitar shopping when I was younger.

There are a couple of nice stores near me, and I purchase guitars and amps from those sometimes. I dislike guitar stores because, having worked in a couple, I don't like to bother the people there. Usually, when I buy something, I play it for maybe five minutes, then plug it in to ensure it works.

At a nice local place, where the people are friendly, I waited over twenty minutes to plug in a guitar (LPC) that I had paid for but some customer was demoing amps for a long time and it just wasn't worth it.

I love guitars, but I really dislike the guitar community these days (no offense to anyone here) because it's more about collecting than it is about writing songs and getting better as a player. It's just very different than it was when I was young, but I guess that's more about getting old.

I think for the real vintage gear - the old Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Martin, Rickenbacker, etc. prices are stable. For the 1980s and 1990s "vintage" stuff probably not so much, but who knows?

 

[Greywolf]

I've been a Luthier for 40 years, as well as a collector and musician. The vintage market is stable, the economy isn't.
Instruments over 10K move slowly , but they still sell. That market is by nature VERY picky .
I don't collect to have a lot of guitars, I search daily for the best examples of the Craft , to cherish , play and learn from

 

[Subliminal lanimilbuS]

Yes, definitely the economy being the factor. Especially with all the political stuff going on to help the rich get richer. I wasn't around in the 1930's to experience some of the worst of that, but even then things did bounce back eventually.

 

[F-Hole]

Rare and/or clean stuff sells.

I sold a Mk1.5 Tonebender last month for $8k, which struck me as nuts.

 

[Greywolf]

https://reverb.com/item/88305943-1959-gibson-les-paul-standard-demo-video

 

[Blind Lemon Chicken]

https://reverb.com/item/88305943-1959-gibson-les-paul-standard-demo-video

For that price you get a lengthy description as well.

 

[Dave P]

During Covid, used guitar prices soared, but now the used stuff isn't selling at those prices The market needs to re-adjust a bit