do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Discussion of newer designs, copies and reissue offset-waist instruments.
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mcbrandt
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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by mcbrandt » Fri May 21, 2021 8:25 am

I'm not a beer connoisseur by any means at all, but I do not understand the rage behind IPAs. That is the worst tasting type of beer I've ever had, yet there are millions of versions of it. At any given event there's like 10 types of IPA, and then one other option like some garbage cheap beer and they claim to have some great varied selection. IPAs are like drinking skunk piss.

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by Larry Mal » Fri May 21, 2021 8:29 am

Ah, I can easily drink the whole four pints if I'm not paying attention, which is what it is but when it's $14 I get kind of annoyed.

I just really haven't been drinking much beer or anything else lately, really, is how I'm dealing with that.

Regarding guitars I remember ten short years ago how I was getting Les Paul Juniors for $650 new, and now they are like $1500.

I hate to be the old licorice whips for a penny when I was a kid guy, but I fail to think that a 250% increase in price over ten years is warranted, either. In any case I'm not paying that.
Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by Larry Mal » Fri May 21, 2021 8:30 am

mcbrandt wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 8:25 am
I'm not a beer connoisseur by any means at all, but I do not understand the rage behind IPAs. That is the worst tasting type of beer I've ever had, yet there are millions of versions of it. At any given event there's like 10 types of IPA, and then one other option like some garbage cheap beer and they claim to have some great varied selection. IPAs are like drinking skunk piss.
It's awful. A good beer hits all the flavors that your tongue can taste, it's sweet, sour, bitter and has a good umami mouth feel.

The pale ale is a gross exaggeration of one flavor that wipes out all the others for no good reason. It sucks and I hate it.
Back in those days, everyone knew that if you were talking about Destiny's Child, you were talking about Beyonce, LaTavia, LeToya, and Larry.

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by Unicorn Warrior » Fri May 21, 2021 9:05 am

mcbrandt wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 8:05 am
robroe wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 6:50 am
As long as people have entire warehouses full of collected guitars in Nashville that they will never play probably not
Ugh. God, how many dickhead bonamossa types are out there doing that?
More than you would believe. If I had the means, I would probably have a considerable flock myself.

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by Pepe Silvia » Fri May 21, 2021 9:14 am

A good beer should not have a sour flavor unless it is a sour. I can't say I've had many savoury (umami) beers either. I like a good IPA, but I agree they are played out, and I'm not a fan of IPAs with more than the four beer ingredients, I like straight forward beers.

Back to guitars. Reverb has a new feature where you can import the gear in your collection and it keeps track of values. I put in the main pieces and got some surprising results.

Jeff Tweedy SG: Paid $1400 3 or 4 years ago. Worth $2200-3100 now.
65 TS Jazzmaster, bought new for $2100 or whatever. Worth $1600-2500 now.
69 Bandmaster Reverb head. Paid $200 plus a $300 Tiny Terror a decade ago. Worth $900-1500 now.
Klon KTR. I traded a VHT Special 6 which I may have spent $200 on. Worth $630-800 now
Moog MuRF. Spent $275. Worth $460-640.

So across the board, all my stuff is worth a lot more. And I feel like if this feature gains traction, it will help drive up prices more. It is fast and easy to enter your gear and then you see a 5 figure amount for all your stuff, and you see a guitar that is unbeknownst to you, worth double what you paid so you list it to get some cash.

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by tamerofbantha » Fri May 21, 2021 12:56 pm

you 3 win the thread, haha. i am 100 percent here for the joe bonermasster hatred and criticizing TGP-esque gear hoarder / collector types who barely (if ever) play
:-*
Unicorn Warrior wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 9:05 am
mcbrandt wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 8:05 am
robroe wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 6:50 am
As long as people have entire warehouses full of collected guitars in Nashville that they will never play probably not
Ugh. God, how many dickhead bonamossa types are out there doing that?
More than you would believe. If I had the means, I would probably have a considerable flock myself.

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by windmill » Fri May 21, 2021 3:56 pm

Pepe Silvia wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 9:14 am

Back to guitars. Reverb has a new feature where you can import the gear in your collection and it keeps track of values. I put in the main pieces and got some surprising results.....

So across the board, all my stuff is worth a lot more. And I feel like if this feature gains traction, it will help drive up prices more. It is fast and easy to enter your gear and then you see a 5 figure amount for all your stuff, and you see a guitar that is unbeknownst to you, worth double what you paid so you list it to get some cash.
This might be the process that will get older people to reduce their collections over time.

They will now be able to see that their prized objects are now worth multiple times what they originally paid and now they need the money to buy something that is now more important to them .

It won't reduce the price by much but perhaps there may be more on the market.

of course obsessive collectors will never sell, because they are obsessive.

:)
Last edited by windmill on Fri May 21, 2021 7:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by Embenny » Fri May 21, 2021 4:25 pm

I've been complaining about this for a few years now. Prices on guitar gear have massively outpaced inflation and, in my case, CAD exchange rate. Adjusted for both exchange rate and inflation, the $500 standard Mexican Fenders I remember trying in shops when I was younger would be $638 today, but instead they're $1k today.

Used prices have similarly gone haywire on common current models. Forget about rarer or vintage stuff - that's a matter of limited supply and increasing demand, so you'd expect those to go up independently from exchange and inflation.

It feels like guitarists are being taken for a ride.

I wouldn't count on the used market "coming down" short of a catastrophic global depression. Inflation is speeding up at breakneck speed and people are prioritizing buying things that facilitate having fun at home. Anyone whose livelihood wasn't damaged by the pandemic is finding things to do with the money they normally spent on vacations and eating out. I live in a city where something like 1/3rd of all households have someone working in government or high tech. Those are two industries where salaried workers either got to work from home, or got paid leave during the pandemic (no joke, many government departments that shut down in-person services couldn't handle finding ways for everyone to work from home, so any full-time employee they couldn't set up for WFH got to stay at home on full salary while they tried to figure out what to do with them).

It's a terrible thing for income inequality, having such a big chunk of my city weather the economic storm completely unscathed, but you don't need income equality to drive demand for consumer goods like guitars. Plenty of people have had money to spend, and they've been buying shit. I sold a few guitars locally at 50-100% profit that I had bought just 1-3 years prior.

I expect to see new guitar prices go up faster than ever. I mean, store can't keep Fender guitars in stock right now basically. There's only so much more Fender can increase production capacity (and I'm sure they're working on it, so the go-to move in a free market is to raise prices if demand is exceeding supply. They can afford to keep raising them until demand drops enough that it may he's the rate they can build guitars. And used prices are dictated by replacement cost, not historical purchase price. If a new MIM strat costs $2000, people will ask $1600 for theirs, even if it was $500 new 10 years prior.
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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by gutter rock » Fri May 21, 2021 7:25 pm

Don’t worry, prices always drop anytime I go to sell a guitar! Every. Single.Damn.Time

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by edwardskim » Fri May 21, 2021 9:34 pm

In terms of used and vintage offsets, there are a few well known shops online that are manipulating the market like crazy. Most of us in here know better not to pay anywhere near those prices.

But they seem to sell so good for them.

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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by HNB » Sat May 22, 2021 11:50 am

The prices shifting and blowing up is one of the reasons I don't really buy new things anymore. I just can't see myself spending over a grand on a guitar and that sort of blocks a bunch of things aside from Squier. I am a fan of Schecter guitars. At least those are still priced really well and they have a ton of nice things. If you are all about Fender guitars or even Gibson stuff, there aren't really any options out there under a grand. Squiers are going up to the prices MIM stuff used to be and MIJ stuff is going up to what US stuff used to be and US stuff just keeps getting higher.

Solution for me? I just make my own stuff rather than deal with the price jumping. I know that solution doesn't work for everyone, but it is out there. If I spend over a grand, it is going to be for something boutique or custom made with the things I want. No way do I want to spend over a grand for something that I would still want to modify to get it where I want it. (Pickups, bridge, etc.)
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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by Larry Mal » Sat May 22, 2021 2:00 pm

And yet I'm selling a couple of guitars for a buddy, have them priced reasonably, and all I'm getting is trade offers for Hondos and shit.
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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by seenoevil II » Sat May 22, 2021 3:33 pm

No, probably not. Why would they as long as we're alive to want them? Once we're dead and can't want them anymore, they'll become worthless.

Enjoy what you already have. It's probably really great. Use those funds to treat the people you love to some sour beers.
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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by Beebe » Sat May 22, 2021 4:25 pm

Weren't new Fenders back in the day costing two months salary or something crazy like that? I think if you took that as a starting point and calculated today's cost using inflation they would be costing a lot more.
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Re: do we think prices will come back down to some semblance of reality?

Post by Embenny » Sat May 22, 2021 6:47 pm

Beebe wrote:
Sat May 22, 2021 4:25 pm
Weren't new Fenders back in the day costing two months salary or something crazy like that? I think if you took that as a starting point and calculated today's cost using inflation they would be costing a lot more.
Yes and no. Yes to it costing over a month's wages at minimum wage, no to it being more expensive than today.

A standard strat in 1964 was $252 in the price list. That's $2126 today, using much less automation than modern USA Fenders, but hitting a similar price point as the higher end non-custom shop models like the Ultra.

Minimum wage was $1.25, which is $10.54 today, so it would take you 201.6 hours at minimum wage to buy a USA-made strat. Those same 201.6 hours at minimum wage in 2021 would give you a budget of $1461 today, which will not buy you a modern American-made equivalent to that 1964 strat. The amount of manual American labour that went into making that '64 would only be encountered in the Custom Shop. Good luck getting a CS strat for $1461.

And that is, of course, not even factoring the massively increased percentage of people's wages that go toward housing, food, and transportation compared to 1964, meaning that a bigger chunk of each paycheck could have gone toward saving for that guitar back then, and you'd be buying it much more quickly.

It was a lot easier to buy an American-made electric guitar in the pre-CBS years, for sure. And that's an important benchmark, because those guitars took a huge number of hours of American labour that were themselves more expensive back then. Yes, you can buy a guitar with the same number of hours worked today, but that guitar was built with a combination of CNC and cheaper foreign labour that reduced production cost. You can't buy the equivalent instrument that used the equivalent number of American wage hours, that's for sure.
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