< Vintage Guitar Market Heats Up

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Heard on All Things Considered

April 21, 2006 - ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

Thousands of guitar collectors are headed to Dallas this weekend for one of the biggest guitar shows of the year. They will get to see and hear vintage Martins, Fenders and Gibson's that sell for as much as a quarter of a million dollars. The market for those guitars has been on a tear lately as aging baby boomers buy up the same classic models, in some cases the very instruments,that their rock and roll heroes played.

NPR's Alex Markels reports.

ALEX MARKELS reporting:

Say you had $10,000 to put towards your child's college education. You could buy a mutual fund or maybe some gold, or you could buy one of these.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

That's a vintage Gibson Les Paul. It's the one that caught Andy Rapaport's eye as he recently browsed among hundreds of old instruments hanging from the walls at Southworth Guitars in Bethesda, Maryland.

Mr. ANDY RAPAPORT (guitar enthusiast): I make investments for a living and I've done very well at it. And my guitar collection has outperformed almost anything else that I've been investing in over the last 10 years. For example, I bought a guitar here in this shop several years ago, it's a Gibson Les Paul from the late 1950's, and I saw one for sale in a store in LA a few months ago for five times what I played for it.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

MERKELS: Only a few thousand of those guitars were produced, and with more and more collectors chasing them, some who don't even play the guitar, classic Les Paul's are going for record prices.

Take the one Gil Southworth has on sale for $115,000.

Mr. GIL SOUTHWORTH (owner, Southworth Guitars): This is a very early 1961 Les Paul custom, single cutaway, black triple pickup model. An ebony fret board.

(Soundbite of guitar strumming)

Mr. SOUTHWORTH: And it's got the happy springtime sound, you know.

(Soundbite of guitar strumming)

MERKELS: When the first Les Paul model was introduced in 1952 it sold for $210. Its namesake is the jazz innovator who first mounted strings on a piece of wood to demonstrate the sonic possibilities.

(Soundbite of music)

MERKELS: But compared to Les Paul's more popular rival at the time, the Fender Telecaster, the original Gibson model was only a modest seller and it was discontinued between 1961 and 1968. That's about when a young British guitarist picked one up and played it in a new way.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

MERKELS: Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page transformed the Les Paul into one of rock and roll's holy grails. What Page did for the Les Paul, Jimmy Hendrix did for the Fender Stratocaster. And folk rockers Steven Stills did for the Martin Acoustic.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

MERKELS: Overall, the vintage guitar market has nearly doubled in the past five years. Prices for acoustic guitars have steadily increased, but it's the electrics that have really blown through the roof.

Mr. KERRY KEEN(ph) (appraiser, Christie's Auction House): When we look at this huge growth in solid body electric guitars, from we'll call the Golden Period, it's really a fashion statement.

MARKELS: Kerry Keen is an appraiser at Christie's Auction House and a collector himself.

Mr. KEEN: We're projecting upon the instrument that we purchase a form of hero worship. Even Eric Clapton, the first guitar he ever purchased was a Fender Telecaster. Why? Because Muddy Waters played one.

MARKELS: That sense of awe helped drive up the bidding for one of the most fashionable Les Pauls, a rare 1959 sunburst model which Christie's auctioned off last October for $265,000. Sales of guitars actually owned by celebrities have fetched even higher prices, like Clapton's famous Blackie Stratocaster which sold for nearly a million in 2004.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

MARKELS: Of course the fame factor is just one attribute that makes the guitars so valuable. Another is the rich tone instruments develop as they age. Collectors like Southworth gush like wine connoisseurs when they describe, say, the sound of a vintage Martin Acoustic.

Mr. SOUTHWORTH: I'd say it's a delicate, yet full bodied, robust yet unassuming. I don't know, I'm just playing around.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

MARKELS: He's joking of course, but it's fairly easy to hear the difference between his 1946 model and a brand new one, which sells for about a tenth that price just up the road at guitar center.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

MARKELS: Solid body electric guitars don't resonate the same way, but guitar appraiser Gil Hembry(ph) says you can still hear the difference.

Mr. GIL HEMBRY (guitar appraiser): A vintage Les Paul is going to sound like a growl. It's going to growl at you. A newer one, although they're very nice, will sound more like a purr.

MARKELS: The distinction doesn't matter much to collectors like Rapaport, he continues to add both old and new guitars to his collection despite the looks he gets from his wife.

Mr. RAPAPORT: Every time I come home with a new guitar, her, you know, she says, well it could be a motorcycle or a blond. And, you know, the guitars are preferable to those. So I think as long as they keep me out of trouble, they're okay.

MARKELS: Rapaport didn't go home with a guitar today, but Southworth doesn't mind, he'll find plenty of customers when he heads for the Dallas Guitar Show this weekend armed with a '59 Les Paul Sunburst. His asking price? Just $290,000.

Alex Markels, NPR News.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

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