Vintage guitars

I was perusing a great site you can put in a search criteria and it comes up with matches. I was looking at early 60s Strats as part of a debate with a friend of mine who can’t get the whole relicing thing. I’m in two minds about it but interestingly we found plenty of early 60s strats in terrific condition, so buying a relic doesn’t mean much necessarily in the looks dept, someone could easily buy an orginal 60s strat that looks as good as my 1980s Squire one, come to think of it my Squire is 25 years old now and that looks nowhere like many of the relics, some bumps etc. on it but nothing like the road worn type relicing that seems so popular right now. And if you did own a puka 60s strat now wouldn’t most people just assume it was a relic anyhow?

After that I moved on to considering price. After some digging about I found that a Fender Strat in the early 60s when they started appearing in the UK was about £168. Given average weekly wage was then about £10 (according to my friends research) that means that a Strat cost approx 17 weeks money of the avg wage.

Fast forward to today then. Avg wage in the UK is about £25,000pa or about £480 a week. So that would mean a Strat should cost over £8000 now! Bloody hell, the £700 - £800 street price for a brand new USA Fender Strat looks like a total bargain doesn’t it.? And that’s not thinking about cheaper but perfectly viable options in the Highway One or Mexican range.

Also £16,000 for a reasonable quality 60s strat on the vintage market also doesn’t seem too bad an investment as it’s doubled over it’s original cost based on the salary comparison.

I’m drawn to wonder what modern Fenders will fetch in the future? There again when I was a young whippersnapper pushing my snotty teenage nose against local guitar shop windows the old-timers who befriended me would go on about “Modern Fenders are rubbish, look at that big headstock, Yuk!, the three bolt neck is pants,…” etc. Also the Tele Deluxe for example I remember being derided by one of these guys when a rich school friend of mine was bought one by his Gran for his 14th birthday. Hmm – I refer you to said site again and look at what one of those originals now goes for. £3000 isn't unusual - although bargains can be found, if £1,500 for something derided in it's day as awful can be considered such.

So here’s my thought (darling:-)) “why don’t we take all the money out of the savings accounts where we are getting no interest and buy a bunch of guitars as an investment”…

Yeah I know, I rather like my nose as is it and drinking mushed up food through a straw for a few weeks not my idea of fun… maybe I’ll not introduce this as my next investment strategy.