38 Piece Catalog Guitar Collection Fair, $8,995.00

Here is a collection, gathered over a near-fifty-year time period, of thirty-seven (or maybe thirty-eight?) pieces of Americana, both literally and figuratively. I’ve been putting these guitars away as I’ve encountered them, in my store, at guitar shows, at garage sales, from places I can’t even remember, with many not having seen the light of day here for decades. Every one of them says “America!” at its best, representing our culture, our history, our westward expansion, our propensity for shameless marketing, and perhaps best of all, our unique American concept of art, in every sense of the word. They are for the most part stencil-painted guitars, made to appeal to the little kid, of all ages, in all of us, and to be sold mostly through mail-order catalogs, relatively inexpensively, in a time when those “picture books” would sit in our homes and be read over endlessly, with lots of wishful longing by, well, the kids of all ages in all of us. There are guitars here picturing cowboys, some of them our movie and TV idols and heroes (Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, etc), and wagon trains, and showboats, and plainsmen and rodeos, and palm trees and hula girls, what appears to be a frog on a lily pad on one of them, the occasional questionable “art-design”, and a personal missive or two, hand-applied later on by parties unknown, a crudely scratched “ELVIS IS THE GRATEST” on the side of one being a personal favorite. Some have their original cases, a few of which are covered with images of cowboys, bucking broncos, branding-irons and the like. Some of these guitars have been seen before and some are rare, hardly ever encountered by anyone of our generation. Most are in other than playable condition though all are fairly intact, some with breaks, maybe a few missing parts etc., but every single one of them is unquestionably way cool and endlessly fascinating and best of all, endearingly American. We’ve seen guitars like these offered at shows for $500-800 each but are offering them here, practically a lifetime’s collection, as an intact lot, all thirty-seven (or maybe thirty eight? One small lonely plastic guitar is hopefully buried in the mix somewhere), with free shipping anywhere in the lower forty-eight states. $8995

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