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Whoever won -- Christie's is always mum on the subject -- now possesses an example of what George Gruhn, America's most prominent vintage guitar dealer, calls "the true Holy Grail of the market." Pre-World War II Martin guitars, especially models made during a decade or so that ended about 1942, are the top reaches for both collectors and musicians. "Why do people desire them?" asks Kerry Keane rhetorically. Keane heads Christie's musical instruments department and is himself a guitar player. It isn't merely how they look, he says in response to his own question, or how they're made, or the materials used. "They sound magnificent," he says emphatically. In the crazy-quilt patchwork of collectors, those lusting after vintage acoustic guitars and other fretted instruments represent a special breed. Besides the obvious difference -- you can't strum on a painting, for example, or finger-pick a rare coin -- fretted instrument collecting exemplifies a passion for extraordinary craftsmanship that appeals visually, tactilely and, most importantly, sonically. "The guitar is a wonderful piece of functional art," says best-selling novelist Jonathan Kellerman, who has amassed a guitar collection now numbering 120 instruments and who will soon publish an illustrated book on the subject. He describes the "voluptuous, curvaceous" look of some instruments, the "touch ... the feel" of others. But the novelist stresses that he collects "for sound" and says that his collection reflects an extension of another passion: "If I didn't play, I wouldn't collect." "I love to use good-sounding instruments," adds collector Bill Dixon, a former savings & loan CEO and real estate investor. A folk singer in the 1960s, Dixon, now retired, has recently recorded a CD of traditional folk music and his own tunes using vintage instruments. "It makes me sound a hell of a lot better." Avid acoustic instrument collectors span the whole range of musical aptitude. Some of the biggest names in music are major collectors. Gruhn says he's sold more than 100 instruments alone to Yes guitarist Steve Howe. Last month, Elvis Costello dropped by Gruhn's Nashville store and bought a Martin D-18. Many more collectors are spirited amateurs like Kellerman, who played guitar as a teenager for bar mitzvahs and weddings and says he "never stopped playing." Keane quips that one segment of his client base could be characterized as New York bankers who spend Wednesday nights at open-mike venues in the Lower East Side, on Long Island and in New Jersey. Then there are those just enamored with the guitars, the kind of players who can manage but a few chords. The ardor for acoustic instruments is worlds away from those who spend unearthly sums for the electric guitars Jimmy Page, Jerry Garcia and other rock gods may have played and -- in the case of Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend -- smashed, lit on fire or otherwise abused. That market is the domain of an entirely different collecting breed, with a passion and a pocketbook for high-priced, rock-and-roll celebrity memorabilia. Nor is this about the faddish market for vintage electric guitars, especially certain models of 1950s Gibson Les Paul Standards and Fender custom color Stratocasters. That's more to the liking of a younger Wall Street crowd, says Scott Freilich, a dealer based in Buffalo, N.Y. The vintage electric market is far more volatile and unstable than the market for acoustics. Speculators quadrupled the value of certain models of solid-body electric instruments during a 2-1/2 year period that ended early last year, Gruhn says. Prices have fallen 30% since. Many of these instruments "aren't genuinely rare," adds New York dealer Larry Wexer. "Tens of thousands were made." Keane likens a prewar Martin acoustic guitar to a "blue-chip stock." The solid-body electrics, he says, are "more akin to the dot-com boom in 1999, where a lot of money poured in and got overheated." Collectors of acoustic instruments, he adds, tend to be older, "more seasoned," "more on the connoisseurship level." As investments, many gold-standard acoustic instruments have done quite well. In 40 years, they've appreciated maybe 100-fold; 20-fold in 20 years; perhaps six times in 10 years. While there have been periods of rapid growth and stagnation, demand for these instruments has held firm even after the collapse of the electric guitar market, Gruhn says. Again, collectors and dealers stress, it's the sound that matters. "People who have gone for the best-sounding instruments have done better predicting what would appreciate than those who self-consciously bought for investments," says David Levin, a Chicago-area psychologist who has built a collection of 35 instruments, many of them the finest examples of the craft. Adds Kellerman, who like Levin, has built a temperature-controlled room for his treasures: "Like art, the best investments are the ones you have a passion for." While acoustic instrument collectors such as Kellerman may bemoan not having picked up a 1959 Les Paul Flametop in the years before the cost soared to more than $100,000, they say they are drawn to the variety, craftsmanship and resonance of unamplified instruments. "Every instrument has its own voice. Every D-28 is different. The tree is different. How the wood is treated is different," says Freilich, a professional musician and guitar restorer as well as a dealer. "I started out mostly in electric guitars, but I fell in love with the acoustic stuff because of the sonic variety." Acoustic fretted instruments include mandolins, banjos, the classic flattop guitar and the archtop guitar -- which has two f-shaped holes in the body and a cutaway at the upper corner and is preferred by jazz and R&B musicians. In some ways, collecting top-end acoustic fretted instruments is akin to collecting violins of the early-18th-century masters. As violinists will attest, musically, you can't get any better. Acoustic guitars, however, aren't nearly as expensive: The Stradivari on auction last month went for a cool $1.273 million. And the marketplace is certainly more broad-based. By Freilich's estimate, there are "20 guys in the New York metro area alone" (they're almost always guys) with more than 100 instruments and 10 with more than 500 instruments. The record price for an acoustic guitar came in 2004, also at a Christie's auction: $791,500 for a 1939 Martin, model 00042. But that's misleading. Eric Clapton played that particular guitar for his "MTV Unplugged" session in 1992, where he demonstrated that "Layla," one of the great rock anthems by one of rock's acknowledged masters, could mellow with age. An almost identical guitar Clapton also owned was up in the same auction. It sold for $113,500. Regardless of provenance, some of the most sought-after guitars easily go for six figures. Martin, for example, made 91 top-of-the-line, abalone pearl-inlay D-45s in the years 1933 to 1942. (The first customized instrument ever made went to cowboy star Gene Autry.) Even a 1942 D-45, in its original finish, may top $200,000 these days. "It's probably the best acoustic guitar I've ever played," says Levin, who owns a 1936 D-45. "Coincidentally, it's probably the most valuable." A close second is Levin's 1923 Gibson F model mandolin, signed by designer Lloyd Loar. Country icon Bill Monroe popularized the instrument. In excellent condition, an unrestored 1923 Loar mandolin may be worth as much as $500,000 these days. Levin proudly relates how his Loar came off the line on July 9, 1923, the same day as Monroe's. However, many other "classics" won't require a second mortgage. Wexer cites the Martin 00018, an all-mahogany guitar without the spruce neck the manufacturer used in its higher-end models at the time. A Martin 00018 from the 1930s in good condition costs between $16,000 and $18,000, he says. One from the 1940s runs about $6,000 less. "The tone creates the demand," Wexer says. "The market dictates the price." Dixon says his "favorite guitar on the planet" is a 1943 Gibson J45, which probably wouldn't fetch $50,000 on the market today. "It's beat up, but it just sounds heavenly," says Dixon, who now divides his time between painting and trolling for old guitars in pawn shops and flea markets near homes in Maine and Florida. He's also written a book on guitar collecting. While he may buy and sell dozens of guitars in a year, Dixon numbers his "personal stash" collection at 18 or 19. Not every collector focuses on Martins and Gibsons, the two biggest prewar manufacturers in the U.S Those enamored with archtops tend to have their sights set on instruments made by prewar masters Charles Stromberg, John D'Angelico and his student Jimmy D'Aquisto. Possibly America's biggest collector ever, Scott Chinery, became obsessed with these guitars. When he died in 2000, his collection of more than 1,000 instruments was sold off, depressing the marketplace for archtops. It still hasn't recovered. Then there's British guitarist Paul Brett, now 60, who was a highly in-demand session player, recorded with such storied rock groups as the Strawbs and the Velvet Opera and wrote theme music for Thames television. He owns 250 guitars, at last count, including some odd one-offs and those made by long-forgotten luthiers. "I don't sort of lust after one guitar," Brett says from his home in Wales. "I collect guitars to fill the timelines of people who played them." Brett is recording these instruments, archiving sounds he fears will be lost. He also produces DVDs on vintage guitars and lends his expertise to the British version of "Antiques Roadshow": "I'm now a bloody antique," he says. For most collectors, the key isn't the accumulation of the oldest fretted instruments around, but of those unrestored guitars fashioned during the prewar golden age of acoustic manufacturing. (Restoration can diminish the value of an instrument by as much as two-thirds, Wexer estimates.) The reason for this focus is simple. Certain structural improvements, the most notable of which resulted in the use of steel strings, came only in the late 1920s and 1930s. Guitars made before can't perform what we think of as modern music. "They become objects of interest, objects of historic study, not objects of desire," Keane says. There are a few notable exceptions. Kellerman's current pride and joy is an 1864 guitar crafted by the father of the modern instrument, Antonio de Torres. Kellerman bought it at auction last October. This was the guitar Torres himself played, Kellerman explains, eventually bequeathing it to another guitar master, Francisco Tárrega. "It's arguably one of the most important instruments made. Period," the writer says. "I feel privileged to play it." According to Christie's records, Kellerman paid $157,000 for that privilege. Like Kellerman, Levin says he's been playing guitar just about his entire life. At different points, Levin, now 55, has been into rock, jazz, bluegrass and classical. Before training as a psychologist, he spent five years as a commodities trader. In the mid-1970s, he paid $4,000 for his first vintage guitar, a 1929 Martin 00045. "It was an ungodly amount," he says, and he seriously questioned his decision, but the acquisition got him hooked. Levin says he's saving his collection for his children, both of whom play guitar. Most collectors say their biggest regrets are those instruments they've either passed on or sold off. Brett lists some guitars for sale on his Web site but admits he often "gets cold feet" and refuses to sell. "I've always loved the sound of the guitar; it's a love affair,"
concludes Kellerman, who, like Levin was trained as a psychologist.
"It's serendipity that it's been a good investment." -- Matt Miller Categories Deal Video
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A Christie's auction of musical instruments in New York one morning last month drew spirited bidding, but it wasn't in pursuit of the 1700 Antonio Stradivari violin on offer. Instead, several bidders parried paddles on another stringed instrument, one crafted more than two centuries later. It was a 1938 model D-28 acoustic guitar, with herringbone trim, made in Nazareth, Pa., by C.F. Martin & Co. The winner paid $115,000. The gavel bang brought a round of applause.
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