Official Luthiers Forum!

Have any of you all seen guidelines on how to evaluate a guitars condition? I'm getting ready to put my 30+ year old Gurian up for sale on Ebay, and I really want to make sure I have it's condition accurately described. I will list everything I can about it in the verbiage, but a little help on what differentiates a guitar from avg/good/excellent/mint condition would be greatly appreciated, especially when you're referring to a collector guitar.

Thank you!

John

An Ovation that's been run over by an 18-wheeler is considered to be in "perfect" condition.



Don Williams38650.4787152778

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I have bought and sold a number of guitars on ebay. I don't know what a gurian is worth, but I can tell you that there seems to be a magic threshold of around 5-6k that is hard to surpass (unless you are selling a vintage martin, LP, strat or tele).

I have bought some EXCEPTIONAL guitars in the 5k range and then found private homes for them and walked away with a couple grand from the experience.

My take is that ebay is for the people looking to get an incredible bargain. It is hard to sell expensive or obscure guitars -- not impossible, but challenging.

Again, I have no idea what this guitar is worth, but what ** I ** would do is first find out approximately what it is worth (it might be worth a call to Gruhn's if you can't get a handle on it), then ask folks on the 13th fret what they think the best venue is to sell it. My guess is someone could materialize from that question who might want to buy it. And worse case, you might actually get some good ideas from them.

If none of this pans out and you don't get much interest, the next thing I would do is contact high end music stores who carry exotic guitars and see if perhaps they would be interested in a trade. They might have a client who would go for your guitar this and would trade for something with a wider market appeal. You would walk away with an instrument that would be easier to sell. I have done this a few times and always made money on the transactions.

Considering the dealer is probably buying at wholesale this could make the transaction a win win for both of you.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Hi Brock,

I have a very good idea what it's worth, but it depends completely on the condition. So I guess back to my main question--how do you evaluate a guitars condition? Once I know what is considered good vs. excellent, etc, I'm set.

I too have sold a couple expensive guitars on Ebay, and I must say I definitly got what they were worth. Way more than I would have received consigning with a local dealer. My best sale ever was an old Fender twin reverb amp with 4-10 inch speakers. I would have been happy with $400 bucks for it--It sold for over $1,200. WOW was I happy, and so was the guy that bought it.

Cheers!

John

[QUOTE=Don Williams] An Ovation that's been run over by an 18-wheeler is concidered to be in "perfect" condition.

[/QUOTE]

Or had its top burned to cenders by a cat knocking over a lamp during lunch break.

elderly
condition key


Not sure if this is what you mean, but elderly instruments has a
condition key on their site that they use for vintage instruments.
By the way, depending on the condition of the Gurian, I have seen
them running from $900-$1800 at vintage dealers. You probably
will not get what Vintage dealer can get from an ebay sale.

Hope any of this is helpful.
Michael