The Gibson ES-335

A no issue 62-64 stop tail block neck was a $20,000 guitar not long ago. They surpassed $25,000 late last year and kept going. The best ones are surpassing $30K. This mint PAF 62 is priced at $35K (by me). It is the cleanest one I’ve ever had but I have to admit, the market is in the stratosphere.

In general, I don’t call out folks who price their guitars way out of what might be called a “reasonable” range. I’d be doing that day in and day out if I did. For as long as I’ve been a vintage dealer, there have been sellers who ask outrageous, off the wall prices for their guitars. And not just high end vintage guitars. I’ll concentrate on vintage ES guitars because that’s the market I know best. Bubbles are dangerous. They burst eventually and people who have bought during said bubble and the market itself are impacted. Prices go up as demand goes up and there is plenty of demand right now, so incremental increases make sense. The market steadily rose out of the ashes of 2008 and prices, while higher in early 2020, were still following that slow, steady path upward. Then the pandemic happened and folks started buying a lot more guitars. Why that occurred is open to interpretation (I’m not a psychologist). But I sell guitars and I sold a lot more in 2020 than I usually do. After some moderate but still reasonable price rise, the market went nuts.

I have to make a very important distinction here. Asking prices and selling prices are often very far apart. I know what I can get for any vintage 335/345/355 built between 1958 and 1965. Beyond that, I’ll defer to others. When I see a 1964 ES-335 (a very nice red one) listed by a reputable dealer for $47,500, it sets off some alarms. I sold perhaps a half dozen 64’s in the past 12 months. High price was $29,000 for a near mint red stop tail. I think the lack of inventory has kicked them up a bit from there. You have to think that if collector grade 1962-1964 block necks are approaching $30,000, then where does that put a clean 1959 ES-335? The 59 is the benchmark 335. As 59’s go, so goes the 335 market. Interestingly 59’s have been relatively flat for 6 or 7 years. The good ones sell in the low $40’s, the players in the mid to high 30’s and the mint or near mint ones might touch $45K. So, where are they now? Well, I can’t answer that because there aren’t any on the market. But if a block is pushing $30K (up around 25% from 2019), then a 59 dot neck should be over $50K and they probably would be if there were any out there to buy.

So, if we consider the current situation a bubble, what happens next? The bubble bursts. The problem is nobody can predict when. Not me. Not you. Here’s the scenario that seems more likely than most to me. The market is currently very thin. There aren’t a lot of good ES guitars out there for sale and those that are are priced (including the ones I have) are priced higher than they’ve been since the crash in ’08. Unfortunately, I’m paying record prices and that means you’ll have to pay them as well. I think that older long time collectors may see this as a selling opportunity and start putting guitars that have been out of circulation for years if not decades on the market-at record prices of course. I hear “my kids aren’t interested in old guitars” from collectors all the time. And also, the famous joke “My biggest fear is that after I die, my wife will sell my guitars for the price I told her I paid for them…” Do you wait for the market to calm down or do you anticipate higher prices? Do you “thin the herd” now or hold out? If the big collectors (who are not youngsters, in many cases) start selling their gems, the supply increases while the demand doesn’t. Prices drop back. No crash just a flattening out and perhaps a modest drop. But, again, when does this happen? I have no idea. I’ve been wrong plenty of times before, so take what I say with the knowledge that I am not an economist nor am I clairevoyant. Use your judgement. Do your homework. Buy what you love. That way, if you spend a little too much and the market drops, you’ll still have a guitar you want to keep.

Early ES-345’s have perhaps benefitted most from the most recent run up. Prices were running way behind same year 335’s for years and years. They still aren’t anywhere near catching the more desirable 335’s but they have tacked on a good 20% since the start of the pandemic. Early 59’s have reached $30K, if you can find one. 60 and 61’s are up over $20K and some sellers are pushing the asks up over $30K. Again, asking prices and selling prices can be very different.

Can you see the Schaller holes in this photo? OK, now you can because I mentioned it but if this was simply one of 20 or 30 photos and no mention was made of the filled holes, would you have seen them? Maybe. Maybe not.

“Didn’t you see the Schaller holes in the photo? It was clear as day…” Call me old school or maybe just old but I believe that the buyer deserves an accurate description of what he is buying. The customer may not always be right but the customer always has rights and that right is being stepped all over by an awful lot of sellers. Is it that folks have simply forgotten how to write? I don’t know, with texting and tweeting more prevalent than talking, I would have expected the art of writing to have had something of a resurgence. Nope. So, what’s the problem?

I bought a guitar recently and before I committed to it, I received more than thirty high res photographs but no detailed description of what the issues might have been. The dealer (yes, it was a dealer) shall remain nameless-it’s irrelevant-I have a good relationship with the dealer and I’m simply using what happened as a cautionary tale. So, don’t ask. It turns out the photos showed the guitar in a very good light. But they didn’t show me all the issues. The best example is a small repaired hole by the end of the neck where it appears a second pick guard had once lived. The seller knew it was there but in the photo, unless you already knew it was there, you would may not have seen it. And why would that be? Mostly because I wasn’t expecting it. The seller could have written in the description…”there’s a properly filled holed from a second pickguard…” Simple. Fair. Reasonable. That alone would not have kept me from buying the guitar-especially since it wasn’t very noticeable. But it was other stuff as well.

I have a real personal bug up my ass about reproduction parts not being disclosed. In a world where a correct short seam stop tailpiece can cost you close to $2000, I’m not real happy when I spend top dollar on a guitar only to get it and find out the tailpiece is a repro. It’s usually a good repro but still a repro. When I brought it up, the seller said…”the tailpiece was clearly in the photos…” Yes, it was but nobody can tell a good repro from a real one without seeing the bottom. The repros have gotten very accurate but not so good that I can’t tell if I have it in front of me. It’s even worse when I make a deal and get into my car and drive 150 miles to pick a guitar up and find out, when I get there, that the tailpiece was replaced. Generally, I get back in my car and drive home without the guitar. It’s partially a matter of scale. I get plenty of guitars with the wrong (repro again) switch tip. Catalin switch tips are pretty easy to fake and a lot of the real ones get scavenged, usually by Les Paul owners who want to upgrade their R9 with real 50’s parts. But a catalin switch tip is a $200 part, not a $2000 part.

So, here’s what I’d like to see happen…When you are selling your guitar, write a description and mention every possible issue that a buyer might find upon inspection. If I hear …”it was in the photos…” again as an excuse for not disclosing an issue, I will simply return the guitar. By all means, put good clear photos in your ad-there’s nothing like a good photo to describe the condition but take 5 minutes and do a write up. It’s not going to take any more time than the last tweet you sent out about your dog.

Quick. Is that a legit stop tail or a repro? I can’t tell and neither can you. If I saw the under side of it, I’d probably be pretty sure it was real. Better still, write a description and tell me if it’s real or not. Don’t know? Then say you don’t know and we’ll deal with it.