FYI if anyone's interested, there's a 1988 CE24 on Reverb for a really good price. I'm really surprised, actually.
The top doesn't appear to be as nice as the '89 i posted a few days ago, but it's in great condition.
Alder body
https://reverb.com/item/11265883-paul-reed-smith-ce24-alder-cherry-sunburst-1988
Edit:
Apparently, it's also an alder top!? looks pretty nice.
Unfortunately, that's in Australia (Tasmania, in fact!). Because of CITES, that would be a true pain to ship anywhere but within Australia, now.
Also, the "SN lost due to neck re-finish" at first alarmed me somewhat, but I see from an old forum post hat early 1988s did have the SN stamped on the back of the neck. Oh, I found this old Reverb listing of the exact same guitar from almost a year ago, also in Australia (Queensland), which also states that the SN would have been on the back of the headstock:
https://reverb.com/item/5523067-paul-reed-smith-ce-1988-sunburst
There are some statements made in that listing that show that perhaps PRS was not super consistent in how they managed parts, such as:
"All research shows that only the very first 1988 run had this very rare headstock logo"
except the 1990 I just bought has that exact same logo. The logo lasted until 1989 (not 1990!) according to PRS's own Model History:
http://www.prsguitars.com/csc/models.html
"Black headstock face and 5-way rotary switch by mid-’89."
Not sure how the 1990 I have inbound has the old logo/headstock if they were indeed cut-and-dried. I do get the feeling that perhaps things weren't as sharply delineated as described, and perhaps there was some "blending" across the model year transition. This thread describes some of the muddling-of-year-features, including old logo on post-1989 CEs:
https://forums.prsguitars.com/threads/1988-ce24-help.16505/
I need to have a copy of the Burrluck PRS book here at work for these types of things...
However, for anyone in the US, there are a couple other older CEs on Reverb still (I know because I bought one on the weekend, a 1990), including this 1989:
https://reverb.com/item/5681131-1989-paul-reed-smith-ce-24-cherry-sunburst