He's Auctioning Off All His Guitars

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]I received an email letting me know that somebody who watches my show had a stroke last year, which has spurred him to auction off all the guitars that he's collected over the years. She wanted to know if I thought things were priced fairly, to which I had to let her know.

[00:00:12]Auction houses purposefully put a low estimate in there to get people excited.

[00:00:17]So, I'll have to see how things go for them. But, I found some stellar guitars.

[00:00:22]Look at this thing. It's one of those Bengal burst access Les Paul customs.

[00:00:26]Here's what a lot of them look like.

[00:00:27]They get that really dark grain fill and it's a pretty standard figure top. Now, can you see why my eyes were intrigued by this one? It's a boat wake flame pattern and that mixed with the dark staining in between. Man, that's a really tasty access custom, which means we get fun things like the apex head carve and your comfort cut and heel swoop. But, as we can tell by our medallion, this one was produced in 2022, so it's got a little bit of age to it. If you're interested in registering to bid on any of these, please keep in mind there's about a 30% buyer premium with value added tax. And it takes place this Thursday over in Glasgow in the United Kingdom. And while they do have shipping services, I'm not sure if that includes international or not, but you can find these on the Great Western Auctions website. But next, a man, I'm kind of jealous of his find here. Look at that. It's a music rising less Paul.

[00:01:19]I had purchased one of those things out of a different auction in the United States, and I liked mine because, you know, it's got a little bit of yellow and green and purple. I thought it was a nice blending of colors with the figured maple top. I'll just go ahead and say it. His is better than mine. It's got a great blending of everything. Not all these look that good. But do you see what's happened here? Just like mine, this has been locked in a case forever.

[00:01:42]The frets are completely corroded. They need a nice cleaning. But look up here.

[00:01:47]you you're probably going to have to replace that at that point. But I kind of like it. The colors match the blue up here with the bear grease. But these music rising less Pauls. If that doesn't reach about 10 grand, that tells you you probably should have just listed it on reverb instead. Oh, goody. They do have a closeup of that stuff. I was kind of surprised to see that this one wasn't signed by the Edge cuz he signed his favorite ones, but it's number 259. And if you're like, ew, what's all this other stuff? That was part of the splash painting process. I do like the kind of zebra wood looking pattern here. This is an absolute crown jewel of the collection. So, needless to say, yeah, that estimates just to get people excited. But next, an interesting Jimmyi Hendris model. I didn't realize it still had the protective film over it. Look at it. It's peeling up right here over the embossed signature part. I don't think I've ever seen one quite that clean.

[00:02:38]Before we had the recent custom shop version of the aisle of white flying V from Hendris, we had this one from 1991 that was a 400 production unit limited edition with the cool Triny Lopez style inlays. And in case you missed it, the Gibson logo and pearl this way rather than being on a big truss rod cover. I have not yet reviewed this particular version, but that is definitely collection worthy. But with the custom shop model coming out, a lot of people started to ask a lot more for these things. I think this one in this kind of condition should probably fetch about 6,500. And here's the other one I would suggest bidding on. Look at it. I've been wanting to find one like this for a while. It's a black 2550. It's the only color that I haven't had the opportunity to document outside of like some of the weird custom oneoffs. But there were a few different stores that customordered these. But the tricky part is finding one in good condition. I mean, the gold's a little bit worn in here, but it's not too bad. The overall condition looks all right. I could polish these frets up no problem. Same thing's true with the brass nut. Even the lacquer doesn't seem to be too aged on this thing. That's one of the finest ebony ones I've ever seen. Got the plastic on the back plate. That's more common than you'd like to believe on a 2550. But it's kind of interesting how all of his plastic protected things have yellowed and kind of crinkled. That makes me think there was some slight humidity issues in how he stored these. I'm always looking for serial number 1 2 3 4 for a certain person. And that one's not it. It's 2721, but it was produced in 1979. So, with the date of that, I doubt it has the belt buckle, but it looks like we at least get the hang tag protector and the good case. With this being a smaller auction house, I bet it'll end up being around400 USD is the final bid, but I'd be in the market around five. But sadly, importing all this stuff, like if you thought buyer premium was bad, wait till import duties and taxes, things have changed lately.

[00:04:33]Let's just say that. But if Gibsons aren't your style, it looks like there's a couple of epophones on here. This was the recent Alex Lifson signature and the ruby red finish. I believe these are out of production now. I remember this guitar being really nice. And that's coming from a guy who doesn't normally like Floyd Rose equipped guitars. He even has one of the purple Les Paul moderns. You know, he watched my show cuz we reviewed one of those. And wow, I'm impressed. I believe this is a Gibson.com exclusive dark purple burst.

[00:04:58]That's a exceptionally nice top on one of those. It's not too pinstripey, but not too wide. I was thinking he exported one, but maybe they sold them on Gibson's website over there. But they called this one 1991 historic Les Paul.

[00:05:11]The historic custom art division didn't quite formally exist as we think of it now. But this could be a prehistoric R six, which I mean to be honest, you don't see those things every day. It's usually the R8s and RO's and 9ines cuz sure enough we've got the prehistoric logo right there. Even has some of the outlining to it. And if you look closely, there's a whole bunch of vertical finish checking which supports my earlier theory about maybe these weren't 100% properly stored. But sometimes you just get that issue on this style of guitar anyway. But yes, indeed it was correctly identified as a 1991, but technically you should call that a prehistoric. Maybe it got autocorrected out of their title. I would personally value this instrument somewhere between 32 and 45 in today's market. Here's some more '90s fun that appears to be in good shape. The '9s is when they first started to toy around with bird's eyee tops as like a select limited edition. And one of the first ones they did, they were just probably using up beautiful wood that was too short for everything else. Because even though we're outside of the three-piece top era, pretty much all the bird's eyes you'll see from this run were three. But man, for everything to have frets like that, expect to have to invest some time in these things to make them feel good again. Hopefully the neck straightness and all that other stuff is good though.

[00:06:28]Whoa, looks like I missed one to put into the bid category. Purple sparkle custom shop le Paul standard. So we've got the ABR1 bridge with a really crazy galactic sparkle finish. This looks like an older custom shop back before the mod collection made them do a whole bunch of crazy stuff. Based on this headstock, I'm thinking probably late 2000s.

[00:06:49]>> Whoa.

[00:06:51]Even on the back and the neck, too. I wasn't expecting that. And yeah, I got it right. 2008. And it looks like somebody's lubricated the tuner, so they should still function. I could see that selling for about 5,500 on reverb. And he's got one of these crazy things. It's the M3 Studio, which whether you want to tie that back to the M3 model or not, that's what this layout is called.

[00:07:12]master volume, master tone, a splitter switch for single coil in humbucker mode, and then a blade style. There was also a classic doneup like this that has the binding and everything. One of those models I still need to document, just haven't ever found the right one. The dilamination in the lacquer, that's not the owner's fault. That's just how a lot of those were in the '90s. But hey, you don't see this epohone every day. The music rising. So, this is the counterpart to that tie-dye Marty Gro one. Might not be as fancy, but it's there. And for an epohone, this thing's pretty sweet. So, it's the Boneyard Joe Perry signature. That's a pretty crazy top. So, it's kind of like the Bengal burst that we started tonight's episode with. They start out as more of a really yellow colorway, but then they do the black grain fill stain technique to the flame to create boneyard. And it looks like we have a darker colored back. Oh, yeah. He's got a snake pit, too. It's the epohone version. But look at that. I don't think I've ever seen one with plastic still over the pickups. You might think it's crazy, but this Epohone could fetch up to 2,000 USD. There are definitely collectors out there for this one. And look, this one even has some fun wood grain, a little bit of flame even right there. The neck maybe not as cool, but even beat up players grade editions of these fetch good money. And of course, if you have that one, why not have the Leonard Skard edition epohone?

[00:08:29]Also with the plastic still over the pickup covers. That was a 30th anniversary celebration edition as you can see there on the truss rod cover.

[00:08:36]And then the auction house has this epohone listed as a 1994 Zach Wild signature. I don't think the year is correct. This is the Buzzaw edition. I would imagine what that serial number.

[00:08:47]It's from 2005. You know what? I've never realized those had an orange stinger before. And you know what? I don't think I ever bothered to look on the backside of one of those either. I mean, I get it. That's what Zach does.

[00:08:57]He has the bare natural neck. But to see it mixed with just straight orange back here, that's fun. But it looks like we've got a couple of amplifiers that you can select from, including a tone master in one of those little tiny Jubilee 2550 stacks, as well as a couple of acoustics from Gretch Ovation and Takamina. And there was more than what we talked about tonight. Some of these older Epoones are hard to find on the used market. So, if you're in the area or in the market where these guys can readily ship to you, feel free to check out this viewer's auction. Full disclosure, this is not a sponsored episode. I didn't have to do this. It was more so of a hey this dude does have cool guitars and I wish him luck in his auction. All rightites. I hope you enjoyed and we'll catch you tomorrow on the next one. Take care.

[00:09:55]Oh hey, he also had a less ball voodoo in there if you're interested in that.

[00:10:00]No, seriously. Click the next video already.