..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Discussion of vintage Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Bass VIs, Electric XIIs and any other offset-waist instruments.
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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by Mechanical Birds » Sun Mar 07, 2021 2:10 am

Debaser wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:43 am
FYI, the collection reported contains 166 guitars. There's at least 23 amps, but that's not clear.

40 Jaguars, 13 being pre-CBS
19 Jazzmasters, 9 pre-CBS, including a '59 in blonde with gold hardware

117 guitars are pre-1970

The pre-CBS Jags and JMs are into a value of at least $200,000 alone, IMHO.
Oh shit I saw the pictures in the post and it was nowhere near indicative of the size of the collection. That is a fucking devastating loss for anybody - not that it wouldn’t be, even for a rich person, for everybody, but that much stuff is a much harder punch in the gut

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by Sauerkraut » Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:03 am

Larry Mal wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:05 am
Pro tip: don't ever worry about what other people have or what they do with their possessions. There's nothing but unhappiness down that road.
I agree, however obvious that is. I got way ahead of myself there. Sorry for droning on like that.

My suggestion that the owner may be selfish was based on assumptions I shouldn't have made. To be clear though, I did not suggest the owner was harming others (unless you stretch the definition of "harm" to the point where it's basically meaningless) or that they suffer from a mental illness. I did, however, make way too many assumptions I shouldn't have made, and some of you helpfully and patiently pointed out why they were unfounded without losing your shit. @Andy: I haven't made up my mind. That was actually why I wrote in the first place. I had questions, and I should have formulated them more neutrally, again.. without all the assuming. I think that's one of the purposes of a discussion forum though, to discuss stuff, learn things(?)

Despite all the unwarranted assuming on my part, I don't think accusations of nastiness concern me. Note that there's quite some passive aggressiveness on both "sides" in this thread. I am genuinely interested in understanding the mindset and circumstances that might lead to something like this happening. It does seem noteworthy to me, out of the ordinary. You've given some good reasons for why that shouldn't necessarily be selfish. For which, thank you! :)

I also don't believe accusations of gatekeeping concern me, but I made the unfounded assumption that the collection's owner was gatekeeping by limiting access to these guitars. I do still think that in the case of relatively rare objects like these, that are appreciated by so many, it'd be cool if there was a way more people could share that enjoyment, but I was wrong to assume that the owner doesn't actually allow that to happen.
Because some assumptions were also made about my own person, which I admittedly provoked; I'm not some jealous budding collector. I own six guitars (including basses and acoustics) that I play and record with (currently in three productive bands), friends have also borrowed and recorded with some of them. When I find I haven't used something for some months or even years, I sell it. And no, I don't believe that everyone should do the same or that I'm a saint for letting other people use my gear, it's my personal preference, which is based on my belief that guitars are best used to make music with. If I made a living making music, I'd definitely own a lot more gear myself, and more of it wouldn't see any use for longer stretches of time.

And yes, of course we should help them get their gear back.

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by sholkham » Sun Mar 07, 2021 4:18 am

andy_tchp wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 6:49 pm

- Is selfish for not regularly checking in on something as important as a stash of equipment for a whole 3 months(!), during something as minor as a global pandemic that's killed half a million (give or take) fellow citizens of his country.

I think I was the one (or at least the first one) to raise the three months thing. I wasn't saying they deserved it for not accessing the collection, I've probably got musical equipment I haven't touched in three years let alone months.

But it doesn't exactly give the police a lot to go off. I work in archival storage so this is a pet area for me I guess.
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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by graceless » Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:31 pm

gringopig wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 1:43 pm
I was looking at the list and shared with a friend who is pretty sure some of these can be seen here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKZb-lJM4nV ... e3038xk92s
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJUuFwNsNg1 ... pomzksmdwj
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJWS9AksxRK ... zdmn0b6t7k
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJzliPDsGr4 ... rwzxhohhyd

The sonic blue JM for example:

L52678 is on the list. Now, the guitar posted by that user is L52X7X but the last digit looks like 8. I'm not 100% but the user is the "Vintage Sales and Acquisitions Manager for Guitar Center"

Maybe the owner of these guitars should check it out.

Instead of getting all worked up about some guy's motivation in collecting, let's all try to help him get them back.
All of these links have been deleted...the plot thickens!

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by windmill » Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:59 pm

This was posted in a thread about the theft on another forum, but there was no other reference to this post in the rest of the thread

"Some of those guitars were already sold to people. And WellStrung pointed it out to the new owners, who returned them.

This has moved awfully quick. Not sure when the theft was."

HTH

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by Highnumbers » Mon Mar 08, 2021 11:18 am

bterry wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 1:41 pm
Highnumbers wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 12:48 pm
Sauerkraut wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 1:17 am


Why do that though? Why store away loads of rare guitars for decades? The idea that he (it seems safe to assume) kept them out of the spotlight makes it even weirder; why not at least photograph them for people to enjoy? I guess I just don’t understand the point of collecting. Is it meant as a life insurance policy? Was he going to donate all of them to a museum at some point? He does realise he’ll die one day like the rest of us? Was he trying to keep them out of hairy metalheads‘ malicious hands? So many questions...

I’d love to see a Louis Theroux documentary about someone like him.
At one point in the 70s and early 80s, these guitars were practically being thrown away. You could barely give away a Fender Jaguar in that era.

A lot of the people who took up collecting back then did it because it was easy and inexpensive to acquire guitars and in many cases I've heard collectors that speak of this era like they were bringing in refugees. Plucking instruments out of a skip/dumpster or from classified ads where literally nobody else wanted them.

And you're also talking about the same generation of people that don't feel the compulsive need to share every aspect of their lives online. I'm not surprised at all that some old guy doesn't "share his collection" online because the thought of photographing and publicly displaying this stuff online seems like an incredibly foreign concept to them (or even a security risk).
I feel like a lot of people just don’t understand the concept of collecting because they see it only as a recent phenomenon dominated by cynical entrepreneurs who don’t care about guitars beyond their investment potential.

In reality, collecting started before the mid 90s, which is when this cynical idea seemed to have really come about in earnest with people like Chinery, etc. and was made infamous by the ~2006 crash.

Most collectors are actually super-enthusiasts, way beyond anyone on most guitar forums. They care about history, preservation, music in general, and they tend to actually play guitar and support live music as well. In other words, they give a shit.

My guess is that the guy in question here is the kind of collector who has been collecting guitars for a long time, is the kind of collector who actually found original and rare guitars from their original owners (this takes actual work and time, unlike looking at Reverb or guitar forums) and who had to be passionate about it because it was probably not easy to track all these guitars down and the guitars weren’t really worth anything at the time. Offsets were still $500 back when comparable Strats were $10k.

Whatever you think about what happened, it seems pretty obvious to me that this guy had/has a passion for offset guitars and it probably took him a very long time to put his collection together. Seems like people here are just jealous of what this guy was able to do. I’d bet many of these guitars wouldn’t have survived to see today if they had been sold to just whomever.

If you want to know why someone wouldn’t post pics of their entire rare guitar collection online, see the original post, lol.

I could not agree more with this, all of it. I know a lot of mega collectors, and not a single one of them is some cynical entrepreneur who thinks they are sitting on a gold mine. In fact, many of them consider the potential reality of losing value over time and they still don't care, it's about appreciating the instruments.

As you mention, back in the day the biggest barrier to collecting this stuff was simply finding it. If you were fueled by enough passion and free time, it was possible to amass an insane collection of custom color offsets for very little money compared to slab board Strats and blackguard Teles. Since the vast majority of the guitars here have not traded on the open market in the past decade or two, it's a safe assumption that the collection was put together a long time ago.

To somehow speculate that this guy didn't love his guitars because he had to pack them away in a storage facility for awhile (and we don't know the circumstances!) is totally crazy. To suggest that he doesn't deserve owning these is blatant jealousy and gatekeeping.

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by gringopig » Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:16 pm

graceless wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:31 pm
gringopig wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 1:43 pm
I was looking at the list and shared with a friend who is pretty sure some of these can be seen here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKZb-lJM4nV ... e3038xk92s
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJUuFwNsNg1 ... pomzksmdwj
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJWS9AksxRK ... zdmn0b6t7k
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJzliPDsGr4 ... rwzxhohhyd

The sonic blue JM for example:

L52678 is on the list. Now, the guitar posted by that user is L52X7X but the last digit looks like 8. I'm not 100% but the user is the "Vintage Sales and Acquisitions Manager for Guitar Center"

Maybe the owner of these guitars should check it out.

Instead of getting all worked up about some guy's motivation in collecting, let's all try to help him get them back.
All of these links have been deleted...the plot thickens!
I think these are some of the stolen guitars. Guitar Centre have taken them in and the guy that posted the IG pics is the vintage guitar manager there.

Find the person who sold them there and you have a good lead. They are stolen for sure and the removal of the IG posts sort of confirms it.

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by rbrcbr » Tue Mar 09, 2021 6:50 am

God, every time I go back to that list, I cringe at the thought of losing this sort of stuff. This person had two (!!!) 61 Jazzmasters in Burgundy Mist :fp: Not to mention all the other cool shit. I hope they can track it all down.

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by mcatano » Sat Mar 13, 2021 8:21 pm

Sauerkraut wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 1:54 pm
SignoftheDragon wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 1:12 pm
Whoever hit his collection is a straight-up criminal and a dick of the highest order. I hope he/they are caught and serve time in the most hellish cage we can throw them in.
I completely agree with you on that. I think few would argue with you on that.
I would argue with you on that point.

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by zhivago » Wed Jun 09, 2021 5:41 am

Some more info from the owner of the collection...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRtWWHvt5vw
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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by graceless » Wed Jun 09, 2021 8:32 am

A precautionary tale of the perils of going without insurance on valuable collections. Premiums are often very cheap relative to the value.

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by SignoftheDragon » Wed Jun 09, 2021 1:51 pm

mcatano wrote:
Sat Mar 13, 2021 8:21 pm
Sauerkraut wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 1:54 pm
SignoftheDragon wrote:
Fri Mar 05, 2021 1:12 pm
Whoever hit his collection is a straight-up criminal and a dick of the highest order. I hope he/they are caught and serve time in the most hellish cage we can throw them in.
I completely agree with you on that. I think few would argue with you on that.
I would argue with you on that point.
Aight, bring it!

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by whitewatersky » Wed Jun 09, 2021 7:51 pm

zhivago wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 5:41 am
Some more info from the owner of the collection...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRtWWHvt5vw
here's one I saw from his collection:
https://reverb.com/au/item/40885483-196 ... e-metallic

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by gringopig » Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:06 am

whitewatersky wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 7:51 pm
zhivago wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 5:41 am
Some more info from the owner of the collection...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRtWWHvt5vw
here's one I saw from his collection:
https://reverb.com/au/item/40885483-196 ... e-metallic
That's being sold legitimately by Joseph at Olivia's Vintage. It was recovered and sold to them as a thank you for helping recover several instruments.

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Re: ..pssst...wanna buy a vintage offset?

Post by JSett » Thu Jun 10, 2021 12:10 pm

gringopig wrote:
Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:06 am
whitewatersky wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 7:51 pm
zhivago wrote:
Wed Jun 09, 2021 5:41 am
Some more info from the owner of the collection...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRtWWHvt5vw
here's one I saw from his collection:
https://reverb.com/au/item/40885483-196 ... e-metallic
That's being sold legitimately by Joseph at Olivia's Vintage. It was recovered and sold to them as a thank you for helping recover several instruments.
That's good, I was wondering if anyone had reported it. Nice to see he's passing good karma around to those helping out
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