At the intersection of nostalgia and
investment lie the coolest collectibles on the
market.
In 1990 a scruffy unknown named
Kurt Cobain walked into a
San Francisco pawnshop and plunked down a few hundred dollars for
an otherwise unremarkable 1960s Mosrite Gospel Mark IV guitar. A
year later, Cobain's band,
Nirvana, released Nevermind, an album
that would change the course of pop music. For a while, however, it
looked like Nevermind would flounder and in early 1992, presumably
in need of money, Cobain sold the Mosrite for a few hundred bucks.
Last April, the buyer of that guitar sold it at auction for
$117,500. The price was somewhat less than the $434,750 paid in
2003 for George Harrison's "Let It Be" sessions Fender Telecaster,
but for sheer appreciation, it's the best recent indicator that the
super-hot collectible-guitar market may be reaching beyond its baby
boomer vanguard.
"Over the last two to three years, the market for vintage guitars
has really expanded," says Jeff Woolf, a former consultant for
Dallas-based Heritage-Odyssey, which sold the Cobain guitar. "The
sale price of the guitar confirms that as long as a guitar is
associated with an icon remembered by his generation, then it'll
always increase in value."
As a consultant, Woolf understandably speaks to the financial end
of the trend, but, like all collectibles, coveted guitars lie
somewhere in the fuzzy area between sound investment and
deep-rooted nostalgia. Few vintage instruments yield
gonna-be-a-star rewards, but this hardly matters to collectors.
Most are amateur players themselves who see guitars as functional
art first, investment second.
"We always say, 'You can't take a share of
Cisco off the wall and
play "Hey Joe" on it,' " says
Alan Greenwood, coauthor of The
Official Vintage Guitar Price Guide 2004. "Most people aren't
buying guitars to make money off of them. They're something to
enjoy."