OffsetGuitars.com

I took a quick gander to see if this has been posted, so apologies if it's been covered.

Stolen gear alert, mostly beautiful offsets.

https://mailchi.mp/vintageguitar.com/st ... rt-1024164

Seems odd to me. There's so many items and it seems the owner didn't have it secured in a way it should have been. That's one thing. It likely took more than one day. If it did take one day, the dude was targeted and the thieves knew exactly what to bring and how long it would take.

Insurance fraud isn't out ruled either.

Oh my god... that is horrible.

That is also one of - if not THE biggest and most impressive Offset collection I've ever seen. If all those colors were original, that rivals the WellStrung Guitar / Songbird Museum collection.

There is a great likelihood of many of these being recovered, some of these are so rare that they attract a lot of attention on the used gear market. You can't just sell them at pawn shops or CL, I'm guessing.

Debaser wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 7:39 am

Seems odd to me. There's so many items and it seems the owner didn't have it secured in a way it should have been. That's one thing. It likely took more than one day.

I wouldn't make the assumption that these "weren't secured in a way it should have been." I recently heard of another storage unit theft where the thieves got an adjacent unit and went through the interior walls to get whatever was available inside. Likely a targeted job.

Perhaps insurance fraud, who knows. But if not, the reality is that a collection like this should not be kept in a storage unit, period. Too familiar a tale, unfortunately.

Must be absolutely devastating to whoever the owner is.

On the other hand... if that is really one person’s collection, am I evil for hoping this means those guitars might actually be used to make some music with? I mean, those thieves are bastards, and it’s not like everyone should only own one guitar, but... 200+?! I already feel guilty about owning five, cause there’s always at least one I don’t play for months.

Anyway, guess they’re more likely to end up wasting away in some other collection.

honestly if a lot of those guitars were "in storage" then they weren't being played often. i feel bad for the dude but at the same time, it's the collector types that push up the prices of these to the point where regular musicians can't afford to play them in the way they were intended.

I'm guessing it's some kind of nest egg which is horrible, but a three month gap before the theft was noticed! Seriously?

That blue Jaguar with gold hardware and a maple BB&B neck is famous, I remember it being featured on here at some point. It's probably the only one in the world, if not one of a single digit number of them, so barring insurance fraud or a targeted hit ordered by some mustache-twirling evil vintage offset collector, it will either turn up or be totally useless to whoever stole it.

That's an amazing collection of jaguars. I've never seen a sea foam green offset for sale ever, and he has three. Blimey!! interesting that even his collection doesn't have a shell pink original. I wonder how many were ever made??

Sauerkraut wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:07 am

Must be absolutely devastating to whoever the owner is.

On the other hand... if that is really one person’s collection, am I evil for hoping this means those guitars might actually be used to make some music with? I mean, those thieves are bastards, and it’s not like everyone should only own one guitar, but... 200+?! I already feel guilty about owning five, cause there’s always at least one I don’t play for months.

Anyway, guess they’re more likely to end up wasting away in some other collection.

Yeah, have to say that's a pretty evil thought.

If this theft was legit, that's a really horrible thing to lose any gear, whether it's one or 200.

There are a lot of guys out there with massive guitar collections, and it's not always rich people either. I've known a handful of older guys (yeah, basically boomers) who basically amassed these huge collections in the 70s or 80s when you could barely give away offsets and many other types of guitars. But they've sat on this collection for decades, totally off the internet and out of the spotlight. This is one such collection.

I'm sorry for him. Lot of money tied up. And if that much time has elapsed it'll be quite difficult to get a lot of it back....

Makes me wonder how many of these 'stashes' are out there. I don't think the vintage market will ever drop down, or bottom out. But it's whacky to see stuff he had that I didn't even know existed.

I'd like to see pics of so many of them. TWO Charcoal Frost Jaguars? Teal Green Metallic Jaguar? Man! I'm so interested in Teal Green and how it would look now. I assume it's in that weird yellowed Ice Blue/Firemist SIlver spectrum so it's hard to differentiate.

Damn, what a loss. I hope they manage to recover everything somehow. That's....that's a lot of shit though. So many guitars. So many cool ones at that. This is exactly the sort of thing that puts me off from ever wanting to have a storage unit to keep music equipment for prolonged periods of time.

s_mcsleazy wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 1:10 pm

honestly if a lot of those guitars were "in storage" then they weren't being played often. i feel bad for the dude but at the same time, it's the collector types that push up the prices of these to the point where regular musicians can't afford to play them in the way they were intended.

I think you are mistaken if you think collectors push up prices on one-off guitars or, for example, a 1963 foam green Jazzmaster?

Demand FAR exceeds supply for these types of guitars, we’re talking less than ~ a dozen or even half a dozen made in all.

In many cases if a collector hadn’t gotten a hold of these guitars in the 70s/80s/90s the chance they would have been hacked/repainted/parted out is huge.

Highnumbers wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 4:12 pm

Sauerkraut wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:07 am

(...)if that is really one person’s collection, am I evil for hoping this means those guitars might actually be used to make some music with? I mean, those thieves are bastards, and it’s not like everyone should only own one guitar, but... 200+?! (...)

Yeah, have to say that's a pretty evil thought.

(...)But they've sat on this collection for decades, totally off the internet and out of the spotlight. This is one such collection.

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.

Ugh... both the theft and the hoarding make me a lil bit sick...

I'm cool with the theft lol that's a sickening amount of guitars