So just how cheap were Fender offsets before they became popular?

Generally though pre-2000's wasn't used and vintage gear much cheaper in general? I had a shop owner tell me one time that things didn't really skyrocket until people started buying them as investment pieces in the 2000's. Still, for vintage Fenders Jags and Jazz's are on the lower end of the totem pole.

But yeah, a lot of vintage guitars that are valuable right now were only popular because they were cheap. Kurt Cobain played Univox Hi Flyers because they were $100 and he could smash them. Not because they were good guitars.

 

(I know what you mean, but it’s still funny)

 

As I recall it, prices for vintage US instruments started soaring in the late 80s/early 90s when Japanese collectors, buoyed by a strong yen, began coming to the US and buying up every vintage guitar they could find. That particular boom ended when the yen crashed, but prices didn't really drop either.

 

I would say even earlier than that; I started playing in 1979 and the vintage market was already around for certain things - specifically LP Bursts were starting to get up there, as were pre-CBS Teles and Strats (particularly custom color ones) and dot-neck 335s. Other things were still quite reasonable - 60s SGs, block-neck 335s, Jazzmasters, Jaguars, 65-68 CBS-era Strats and Teles, Gretschs and Rickenbackers for example could be had pretty cheaply until the mid-to-late 80s (call it 85-87) before their prices really took off. A lot of it depended on where you lived and if they had a vintage guitar dealer/market - I grew up in Louisville KY and we had a good-sized vintage dealer there which kind of drove up the local market.

 

Damn! If only I'd seen that photo when I was 16 I'd have that pre-CBS Jazzmaster today))

 

been buying selling guitars since1979 in the uk and us guitars have always held there money

 

Heck, in 1999 a buddy bought a ‘64 Jag refin from Elderly Instruments for $600, and I bought a refin ‘65 Mustang for $300, and that was well behind the curve on them becoming “cool”.

 

I had an early 70's Mustang exactly like this one. I bought it in 1986 for (if I remember correctly) around $250 with a Fender hard case.

 

And Tom Verlaine

But they were still relatively cheap well into the '80s and '90s.

 

Wasnt just offsets, it was other stuff too. I remember well a pawnshop here in my city, had two cherry red early/mid 60s ES-330s, each for 500.00. That would have been about 1988-89, and even adjusted for inflation thats a little over 1000.00.

 

I bought a 66 Mustang in 1982 for $150. Even up into the early 90s you could get a vintage pre-CBS Jazzmaster for $800.

 

I read this thread about how cheap the unpopular Fender models were, but what most people don't seem to realize that the popular guitars weren't that "expensive" either. My friend had a 1970's Gibson ES 335 that he bought for $400 in the 1990's. You could find a U.S. made 1970's strat for less than $500 no problem back then. It was easy, everyone thought they were garbage. In the 1990's I bought a 1974 Les Paul Custom for $500 that's pictured here. Back in the 1980's a 1969 Stratocaster was about $1500 tops.

IMG_0765 by Kloun posted May 12, 2020 at 6:26 PM

 

When I was young (school days in the 50’s through mid 60’s) no one was playing LP’s in rock and roll bands. Sales were so bad that they quit making them in the early 60’s and came out with a completely different guitar named the Les Paul, later renamed the SG.

 

Brand new the jazzmaster and jaguar were meant to be the top of the line guitars for Fender. They were apparently ahead of their time, and had short lived popularity. I’ve heated stories of them sitting in shops for years untouched until some big name in punk/shoegaze etc found it and took it home for pennies.

 

My favorite Kurt Cobain quote regarding the Mustang:

Cobain: "Whoever invented that guitar was a dork."

GUITAR WORLD: "It was Leo Fender.'

Cobain: "I guess I’m calling Leo Fender, the dead guy, a dork. Now I’ll never get an endorsement. [laughs] We’ve been offered a Gibson endorsement, but I can’t find a Gibson I like."

 

The thing is about Fender guitars, is that they are increasingly over engineered. Each groundbreaking iteration of guitar was that much more over designed. I dont think Kurt is entirely wrong in his opinion.

 

In the mid 70s I bought a '68 Tele for $130 at a pawn shop. Sold it for $190 around 1979. I remember a pre-CBS Strat at a guitar shop in Berkeley that was going for $300 in about '76 or '77. It seemed like a lot of money for a fairly beat up guitar at the time. I was just a kid-- I paid for the Tele with money I earned from delivering the Berkeley Gazette on a paper route. I had something like 150 newspapers to deliver every single damn day. Before that I had an Aria 335-ish copy, a horrible green sunburst color, that I bought for $60. I wish I still had that Aria today.

 

In 1987 or so, there was a partially-disassembled Mustang in natural finish that was hanging at the town pawn shop. It was up for $300 or $450, I can't recall exactly (scary to think how long ago that was...), and I lusted after it because it was a better guitar than the one my grandfather loaned me, and it was within a summer's worth of work if my parents would let me keep the money. There are various reasons that aren't allowed to be discussed here that I found it difficult to get a summer job on one of the big town farms as a 16/17 year-old in that region of the country, and the guitar was gone within 3 weeks anyway, so no Mustang for me.

Thinking back on it now, that was an exorbitant price in 1987 dollars for a used and incomplete guitar, so maybe it was for the best. The Ovation Breadwinner and Mesa/Boogie Mark IIc that I could have gotten for $600 as a bundle in 1991 if only the guitar shop would have extended me the layaway credit has bothered me ever since...

 

I firmly believe that the whole vintage guitar market was created by a few hoarders, Gruhn in particular, who had priceless exposure for his income generating rhetoric in his column in Guitar Player magazine, which at that time was the bible on all things guitar related. I remember a particular column where he spoke of Clapton asking him to find him a Jazzmaster, and how he saw dollar signs, hoping that if Eric were seen with one, then he could make a killing buying up used ones and selling them at a huge profit. Unfortunately for greedy George, Eric changed his mind, and decided he didn't want a Jazzmaster after all, and Gruhn was stuck with all the ones he had hoarded. What a big DB!

 

At college in 74, I could have bought a Mustang for $75. I passed. Almost as bad a decision as passing on a Junior for $200 two years earlier.