archtop
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To sell, or not to sell, that is the question
- Thread starter Em7
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archtop
New Member
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These days I use rampant retail theft and robberies as an excuse to NOT bring my unused guitars and amps to a local shop, and you never know who's lurking near a UPS store so Reverb is also out. Guess I'm stuck with all that gear!
alantig
Zombie Four, DFZ
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I wake up every morning surprised I wasn't smothered in my sleep.
Moondog Wily
Howlin' At The Moon!
Now you know how the Smothers Brothers family felt!
Bogner
Redwood Original - Pure Blood
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Love Is Love...
DreamTheaterRules
I'm sailing!
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You kidding? I mean, he ALSO holds his guitars in higher regard than he does himself. Heck, I bet everyone here holds my guitars in higher regard than they do me, and I don’t even HAVE a Private Stock! Well, my wife is up there… at least a Wood Library… No pun intended, of course.
After a while, one runs out of space to store guitars. I moved from a bigger house with a basement to a much smaller house without one. Conditioned storage space is at a premium.
JasonE
New Member
I managed to sell off three guitars last week. I have a couple of guitars up for sale and I sold a few over the summer last year. I will be down to six electric guitars sell, so it is starting to get difficult to pick next victim. The good news is that I have sold off most of the expensive guitars and am down to mostly working man instruments. They are the guitars I actually play because I am not afraid of scratching them.
What is crazy is that I had at most two electric guitars the entire time I was a gigging guitarist. It was not uncommon for a gigging guitarist to own only one guitar. That is why I do not get all of the bellyaching coming from Millennial and Zoomer guitarists about guitar prices. They appear to want to what the older generations took decades to acquire. All one needs to do is adjust seventies Fender and Gibson prices for inflation and one will immediately know that modern American-made prices are lower than 70s prices when adjusted for inflation. A new nothing special Stratocaster cost $450.00 in 1977. That figure when adjusted for inflation is equal to $2,278 in 2024 dollars. A Les Paul standard went for $700.00 in 1977. That figure is equivalent to $3,543.00 in 2024 dollars. Quality guitars have never been cheaper.
What is crazy is that I had at most two electric guitars the entire time I was a gigging guitarist. It was not uncommon for a gigging guitarist to own only one guitar. That is why I do not get all of the bellyaching coming from Millennial and Zoomer guitarists about guitar prices. They appear to want to what the older generations took decades to acquire. All one needs to do is adjust seventies Fender and Gibson prices for inflation and one will immediately know that modern American-made prices are lower than 70s prices when adjusted for inflation. A new nothing special Stratocaster cost $450.00 in 1977. That figure when adjusted for inflation is equal to $2,278 in 2024 dollars. A Les Paul standard went for $700.00 in 1977. That figure is equivalent to $3,543.00 in 2024 dollars. Quality guitars have never been cheaper.
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Rhythmisking
New Member
So cheesy, bit so damn funny!
Moondog Wily
Howlin' At The Moon!
I did think about it for a minute or two to try and shave off some of the cheese, but that was the best I could do with the time allotted to said task ;~)) I guess it could be a horror film franchise as well including "The Smothers Brothers - Curse of the Down", "The Smothers Brothers - Pillow Frights" and more! I know, more bad dad jokes! Maybe I should become a dad before I go any further!! Let me get on that!!!
Wow, just wow! I just received the lowest of low-ball offers I have ever received for a used guitar on a spotless CE-24. I have put up several brands at this point and none of them came close to how low-ball this offer was compared to my asking price, which is significantly lower than the new price. I know that the used market is down because people have yet to learn that the 2024 resale limit is $5K, not $600 as congress foolishly pushed through during the American Rescue Plan. That limit has clearly stopped guitarists from upgrading. However, it appears that used PRS sales have clearly taken a huge hit. I am hoping it was just a dealer looking to purchase a guitar at or below blackbook because it was not anywhere near bluebook.
SinSir
Mad Scientist
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Cause the feast is over and nature is healing itself!
Well, so far, Eastman resales have been the best. I go 85% of what I paid for my Eastmans. Gibson Custom sales are dead. Gibson production is still good to abot 70% of new if the guitar is in new condition. Fender American sales are still okay, but PRS resales are in the tank, even for working man instruments like the CE-24. I am glad I moved my MC58 in 2021.
If this used resales malaise keeps up, it will eat into new sales negatively because people will stop upgrading. That is something congress did not think about when they set the online sales limit so low. It has had a disastrous effect on second hand sales because guitars are expensive. I know that Reverb has been at the forefront when it comes to getting the limit raised. Musicians are a group of people who have traditionally relied upon being able to flip an instrument that is not working for them in order to get something else that will. I have lost count of the number of guitars I have purchased over the years where I could not locate the sales receipt as little as a year later and I have purchased many used instruments without a receipt. This limit was an example of congress being penny-wise and pound foolish. Hopefully, the guitar manufacturers see the long-term ramifications of guitarists not being able to flip guitars without incurring ordinary income tax on money on which that tax has already be levied because the seller no long has or never received a receipt.
If this used resales malaise keeps up, it will eat into new sales negatively because people will stop upgrading. That is something congress did not think about when they set the online sales limit so low. It has had a disastrous effect on second hand sales because guitars are expensive. I know that Reverb has been at the forefront when it comes to getting the limit raised. Musicians are a group of people who have traditionally relied upon being able to flip an instrument that is not working for them in order to get something else that will. I have lost count of the number of guitars I have purchased over the years where I could not locate the sales receipt as little as a year later and I have purchased many used instruments without a receipt. This limit was an example of congress being penny-wise and pound foolish. Hopefully, the guitar manufacturers see the long-term ramifications of guitarists not being able to flip guitars without incurring ordinary income tax on money on which that tax has already be levied because the seller no long has or never received a receipt.
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archtop
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The current state of the used gear market likely has little to do with new IRS reporting requirements, including the $600 threshold to make "internet millionaire pay their fair share", and more to do with all the pandemic players moving on and trying to unload all the gear they bought so they could fit in or look cool on Zoom calls by having guitars in the background.
Used gear prices were tanking b4 the pandemic with Boomers buying less and selling off their collections. The pandemic players gave the industry a temporary boost.
Fender had $100 million in orders cancelled last year, some boutique builders took orders and are backlogged years are now facing huge demands for refunds of deposits, check out the saga of Don Mare pickups who stopped accepting orders in 2022 and now has folks wanting refunds of their deposits because the pandemic is over and after Don lost out on over a year of orders from legitimate buyers who really want his pickups (and didn't just hear about them on social media (Don is now semi-retired and never taking customer orders again).
Used gear prices were tanking b4 the pandemic with Boomers buying less and selling off their collections. The pandemic players gave the industry a temporary boost.
Fender had $100 million in orders cancelled last year, some boutique builders took orders and are backlogged years are now facing huge demands for refunds of deposits, check out the saga of Don Mare pickups who stopped accepting orders in 2022 and now has folks wanting refunds of their deposits because the pandemic is over and after Don lost out on over a year of orders from legitimate buyers who really want his pickups (and didn't just hear about them on social media (Don is now semi-retired and never taking customer orders again).
As to far as to Boomers selling off their collections, which Boomers? That is what I hate about generational labels. Boomers are not a monolithic group. They span three decades and are three very different cohorts. I was born in the early sixties. I have no affinity with Boomer icons like the Beatles. I was listening to made for TV bands like the Monkees when the Beatles were in their heyday. I do not remember where I was when JFK was assasinated because I was a toddler. I have more in common with early Gen X than I do with Boomers who were born in the forties or fifties. My ex-wife is a Gen-Xer. In fact, the author of the book entitled "Generation X: Tales of an Accellerated Culture," Douglas Coupland, is a Boomer born in the same year in which I was born. He included everyone born in the sixties as part of Generation X.
I did not want to sell my guitars off. My children asked me to downsize collection to something they could handle just in case I go early (my parents passed early). The fact that I retired early and moved into much smaller house made the decision easier.
What I heard from a local retailer is that shop owners are using Reverb to dump surplus stock. They list the gear as used even though it is brand new to get around MAP.
By the way, I like the "Internet Millionaires" bit. What was congress thinking when they set the limit so low? Why don't they increase the tax on long-term capital gains to what it was before Reagan was president as well as limit deductions on long-term capital gains like they did on ordinary income when a certain orange colored man was president. Supply-side tax policy coupled with global labor arbitrage has resulted in the greatest redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the capital class in the history of this country. Why? It does not take a rocket scientist to understand. The highest tax rate on ordinary income (salaries, wages, tips, and interest income for the most part) is 37 cents on a dollar. The highest tax rate on long-term capital gains is 20 cents on a dollar. A person making $1M in taxable income earned via work is going to have a tax bill that is nearly twice that of a person earning $1M in long-term capital gains and the person earning $1M in long-term capital gains has many more ways to adjust his/her taxable income. Here's the kicker. The capital class has duped low-information working people into believing that they are capitalists because they may have a 401K. However, 401K distributions are taxed as ordinary income, not long-term capital gains, regardless of if the distribution was deferred compensation or gain on deferred compensation. The tax system is already rigged against work, so why go after people who may earn more than $600.00 selling off personal items? Most people do not keep receipts because they are not businesses that can write off expenses.
archtop
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3 decades? When the term "Baby Boomers" was first used in the early 1960's to describe the post-war "baby boom" when soldiers came home and started families. It was specifically children born 1945 - 1955. In the 60 years since the phrase was first used "Baby Boomer" has been expanded to include anyone over 50 and sometimes even anyone over 40 - so Millennials are now becoming Boomers. Simply put the definition of "Baby Boomers" has been expanded to include more people who it is socially acceptable to hate as ageism is that last form of bigotry that doesn't incur a backlash.
And yes, some "Boomers" were downsizing before the pandemic but, per some recent reporting, interest rates and a tight housing supply have made it more practical to stay in their current homes. Although I think the Boomers are just hanging on to their bigger homes to torment Millennials and Zoomers who decided to move to the suburbs en masse because someone told them having toilets to repair and lawns to mow would give their lives meaning during the pandemic lockdowns.
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