So the obvious question is what will the average Silver Sky look like in 15-20 years? It's a strat. NO, it's a PRS! NO, it's a strat! How will it resolve this riddle?
Any guitar that's regularly rode hard and put away wet is gonna show signs of wear. Any guitar that's treated like a princess will still be pristine 50 years later. I had a strat and a Martin D-28, both bought well used in about 1978-79 and I had them both for 25+ years - they were my only guitars. I was playing out a lot for the first 10-12 of those 25 years and both of those guitars had some well earned scars by the time I sold them. I just got back into playing a little over 3 years ago. I have a strat I've had for a couple years, a Silver Sky I've had for a couple months. On the acoustic side I have a carbon fiber Emerald I've had for a couple of years and an all-hog Martin I've had for almost a year. All of these guitars are absolutely pristine. Any of them I still have when I die - hopefully a good 25-30 years off but who knows in the current environment, could be next week - will no doubt still be pristine. Because I don't play out - I'm a home player, nobody else plays my gear. I travel with a couple of them twice a year, in my car - no planes or trains or ubers or city busses anymore. I've just sold the carbon fiber Emerald - I don't think you can hurt those without trying really hard. I'm gonna replace it with another Martin, which I could hurt, but probably won't.
If I had somehow come to own a Silver Sky in 1979, it no doubt would have been pretty beat up by the time I finished with it 25 years later. But I'm from the tail end of the boomer generation - the baby boom and the guitar boom. By the time PRS was around and getting known, I was over my youthful insanity - I was launching a family and career at about the same time Paul was launching PRS. Older boomers were well into their peak earning years. And a PRS, at least an American made PRS, which is all there was early on, was NEVER an instrument for an economically challenged kid to go beat up. You've always been able to buy a decent tele or strat from anywhere from a little to a whole eff of a lot, so you see a lot of beat up ones running around out there. Some of it earned, some of it from the "pre-worn jeans" school of guitar design. I had a roadworn tele for about a year - I liked having one guitar that looked like it had lived a bit of a life, even though it hadn't. But, alas, I'm not a tele guy, and it had to move along.
So it's not like there are NO beat up PRS's out there and no old pristine strats. But there's a solid demographic reason why they're the exception rather than the rule.
-Ray