https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/ ... /?sort=old
Reddit stories can be a nightmare to read, so for anyone here's a spoiler-tastic recap of events:
- 22 year old guy asks if he's an asshole for buying his dream guitar without telling his fiancée.
- He bought the guitar after some idle googling, and it's a once-in-a-lifetime deal.
- Guitar is a pre-60s Les Paul Custom (triple pick-up), black with gold hardware. It costs him just under 10K (more on this later)
- He couldn't get finance from the guitar store, so he put it on an old credit card with a $10K limit.
- He didn't tell his fiancée, and when she finds out, she's pissed off.
- He thinks it's fine to have it on his credit card, because that's what they're for and he can handle the repayments. Also - it's once in a lifetime opportunity and a sweeeet guitar.
- It turns out he doesn't know what the interest rate is on the card, but the minimum repayment used to be $80, which is fine.
- It's explained to him that he'll need to repay more than the minimum if he ever wants to pay it off, and the minimum is actually going to be higher due it being a percentage of the outstanding amount.
- He's not worried, because the if he can't repay, bank can just take the guitar from him and cancel the debt.
- It's explained to him that that's not how this works.
- Doesn't matter though, because he's due to get a return on an investment real soon.
- The investment is a word-of-mouth deal where he invested some money his old band got from a record deal into a legal cannabis dispensary, and he's expecting the return just as soon as the legal issues around banking money from cannabis dispensaries are sorted out.
- He's also earning $15 an hour working in said dispensary. So yeah, financially, it's going to be FINE
- Oh, but he's still paying out on a court-mandated settlement for an accident he was involved in (which is why he couldn't get finance from the store)
- Back to the guitar - after the "you spent HOW MUCH on a guitar!?" comments have died down, a few more discerning redditors start asking "hold on, if this is a rare '50s LP, why's it so CHEAP?".
- Apparently it's a legit closet classic - owned from new and kept in its case since the 60s. The dealer told him eight other people were interested, which is why it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he had to act FAST.
- A few people post links to similar guitars, at the kind of prices you'd expect for '50s LP Customs.
- The music shop must have made a mistake!
- He's overjoyed, because his considerably more mint condition, and could be worth, let's see, 150-250K!
- He gets back in touch with the music shop to see if they can arrange an appraiser, and it turns out they've been trying to get in touch because the guitar is a reproduction/fake that was mislabelled, so he's to return it for a full refund.
- He phones his fiancée to tell her this, and gets told "we're done".