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The flametop story: This is true, I was there.
This happened at a Kansas City guitar show in either 1993 or early 94. I don't remember for sure, they had 4 shows a year there and I hit them all. It was a Sunday morning, and the hall was fairly dead. Sundays never picked up till after lunch, so it was fairly common for the dealers to just leave their tables and look at everybody else's inventory. A guy walked in carrying a 50s Les Paul case and said he really didn't want to pay the $5 admission if he wasn't going to find a buyer for his guitar. The guy behind the ticket table, who actually owned the show, called over the closest dealer.
The dealer comes over, and it's obvious what the case is. The guy asks him to look at the guitar and tell him if he could sell it. The dealer does, and about goes into shock. It's a 58, near-mint, and totally untouched. It was a flametop, but not a particularly good one. Still, it was a hell of a guitar, and by far the best thing that had ever walked into that show.
The dealer says yes, it's a good guitar, does the guy have a price in mind.
The guy says... and it hurts me to even think about it... that it was his dead father's guitar, and that his mother told him to see if he could sell it for enough to buy a refrigerator, and maybe a washing machine. "Would $2000 be too much?" he asked.
The dealer couldn't buy the guitar in the entranceway, it had to come inside the show. We all liked the promoter, and didn't want to break the rules. He told the guy to consider it sold, but that he'd have to pay the $5 and bring it to his table. While the guy bought his ticket, the dealer went back to his table and counted out $2000.
At this point, he was the only person inside the show that had any idea what had just walked in. It should have stayed that way.
The guy with the Les Paul carried it to the table and set the case down. The dealer started to hand over the 2 grand, but the guy kind of balked. He wondered if he might have underpriced it. The dealer said fine, I intend to buy this guitar, would you take $3000? The guy said yes, and the dealer turned around to get another grand.
That's when it all fell apart.
Another dealer walked up and flipped the case open. He took one look in the case and yelled "I'll give ya 10 grand for that!" A bidding war ensued, and it finally ended at $22,000.
Now here's the bad part. At that particular time, that guitar might, just might, have been worth $25,000 on a good day, and it would have taken a while to get that price. There's no way any dealer in his right mind would have offered that, but his table had been violated, annd he intended to buy the guitar whatever it took.
The Les Paul guy trembled, slowly closed the case, and walked out of the building without saying a word. He was terrified of what he was holding in that case.
I heard about a year or 2 later that he never did sell the guitar. When you get offered an obscene amount of money like that, sometimes you've just got to jump.
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1991 245, 61k miles, looking for a 5 speed 92-93 245 cheap.
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