The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Odd statistic that may have zero to do with guitars but maybe not. I have never been a car person I buy them to drive and keep as long as possible. Get them paid off and then drive as long a you can without payments. Cars are a financial drain for sure.

    Well in the odd economy I bought a new Ford Escape in Sept of 2019. I don't drive much covid and the like so my car only has 12,800 miles on it and still under warranty. Well they keep bugging me to trade it in or buy it as the dealer wants good used cars. Well for me that is a no go I like this car and it is paid for. Well I run the Kelley Blue Book on it and the car is worth more than I actually paid. I am convinced that right now I can easily get what I paid for the car and actually more. That does not count tax but the fact is this is a real first. Never would you own a car for over 2 years and it be worth more, at the least regular cars people buy not collector types.

    So the next question is are guitars worth more than we paid for them about 2 years ago to maybe 3 years. For maybe the first time ever I can say the certain guitars clearly have appreciated and more that simply money in a savings account. This distinction would easily fit Gibson higher lever guitars like 175 and L5's ect. Certainly other guitar fit this mold too but just not sure of which ones without more thought.

    Who would have ever thought this? Then of course the market crashing the future lies quite open I would say.

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  3. #2

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    Covid has been a game changer. Money printing, labor shortages, increased saving rates, supply chain problems and other factors have made used cars and certain guitars go up in value. It is all about supply and demand (it always is).

    But like the mutual fund managers say, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. And for the most part, we buy in the same market in which we sell.

    I like Gibson guitars better than cars or motorcycles. Vehicles depreciate mostly, are expensive to maintain, rot if you don't use them and take up a lot of space to store (and in some places are expensive to register and insure). At least so far, Gibson guitars bought used are better than money in the bank.

    I don't see the recent appreciation of used cars as being an ongoing thing. The market will correct this once it is agreed that Covid is endemic, not pandemic.

  4. #3

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    In my neck of the woods used car prices have gone up because the chip shortage has delayed new cars by months and months. I bought a used 2018 Skoda SUV a year and half ago. Almost 40,000 miles later I see the same price asked for another 2018 model with identical mileage but less equipped. Electric cars are all the rage here and diesels seen as next to a cardinal sin; yet used diesels sell like hotcakes. I have two homes/workshops 110 miles apart, diesel still makes sense and I'm not alone in this country with long distances. Tomorrow, over 200 miles with trailer, for a year's load of shell pipe for Toob cabs.

    Hmm... Could I live without my 2007 Benedetto Bravo, 2014 ES-175 1959 VOS and/or 2011 Tal? Tentations welcome, preferably from EU.
    Last edited by Gitterbug; 01-24-2022 at 03:06 PM.

  5. #4

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    My wife's '19 Fusion Hybrid lease is coming due. They practically drooled over the car when we went in. The sales person said they just can't get any new cars right now. You have to order one and wait. Well we really like it, super smooth quiet ride, it's fabulous on gas nearly 40mpg (we can drive from Buffalo to Long Island on one tank.), extremely low mileage only around 2/3 of the allocation because of covid and she is retired, and they're not making them anymore. So we decided to buy it outright. Turns out we got it for thousands less than the other ones of the same vintage they had for sale.

  6. #5

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    Inflation. I had two bagels and coffee to go and it was $10 USD.

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by icr
    Inflation. I had two bagels and coffee to go and it was $10 USD.
    Starbucks?

  8. #7

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    Local large Mazda dealer here is putting an extra $2,000 on the 2022 Mazda3 sedan price… “Dealer Adjustment”.
    2018 3 is 24,000
    2022 3 is 26,000 (at a dealer that doesn’t “adjust”)
    Wild.

  9. #8

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    I bought a lot of stuff in the last 2 years...3 guitars, 2 cars (plus one I helped my son purchase), a house (for my daughter to rent) and a bunch of woodworking tools and supplies.

    In retrospect it seems kind of like an orgy of consumerism, but I think I did pretty well in terms of getting in before the cost increases started to go vertical.

    For instance, I got a 175 for I'm sure 40% less than I would have to pay now. The cars (Miata and Ridgeline) were both below MSRP, but the 2-year-old Tacoma I traded in for the truck brought almost as much as I paid for it. The house I bought--1/2 a duplex--was a great deal, about half the current average home price in Omaha.

    I sure as hell did my part to stimulate the economy!

  10. #9

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    We bought a new car at the best, or worst, of times. I'm still not sure. Bought it two years ago this month. Due to covid, it has 4500 miles on it. We could have gotten by with the older car my wife drives. One car is a pain in normal times, and I won't even think about driving hers on long trips, but these are not normal times. I took the car in early for the 5,000 mile service, and the dealer's service advisor chided me for waiting two years to have it serviced, even though it still hadn't reached the first service mileage. I haven't even looked to see what the car would cost now, but I assume it's much more. We did get a mailing from the dealer who sold us the other car, and the offer was for more than we paid for it new, and it's a 2017, albeit low mileage for its age. I thought about selling it to the dealer, but it was in a body shop for repairs after she was rear-ended by an uninsured driver. We're not in a bind for the money, so I haven't bothered to try to sell it. I don't see a severe shortage of used cars, though. There are a number of used car lots nearby, and they are all full of cars for sale.

  11. #10

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    There's a big difference in the drivers of car vs vintage guitar prices. Car prices are increasing due to supply chain shortages. The supply chain for vintage guitars is non-existent. What's driving an increase in the price of vintage guitars, which are luxury goods, is consumers' pockets flooded with wealth from government stimulus and the ridiculous financial returns of 2020/2021. We're seeing some major corrections due to Fed policy and omicron, especially among technology stocks and crypotcurrency. If the downturn persists, you can expect to see a lot of gear prices come down. My thinking is: if you have gear to sell, this is a good time. When I saw retrofret list a Les Paul Junior at $24k I was pretty shocked. Even just one year ago, they were selling from shops in NY (which are always at a premium) for $7-8k. Personally I think there's a major vintage gear bubble at the moment.

  12. #11

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    I sold a princeton reissue that I bought used 4ish years ago to a shop. They paid me 60% of what they think they can sell it for. I made a small profit. How crazy is that?

  13. #12

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    Nobody's pockets are flooded with wealth from government stimulus payments. Those who needed it to survive spent it on luxuries like food and rent. For those who didn't, it wasn't enough to buy much they couldn't already afford.

  14. #13

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    Yeah if my pockets are flooded w dough someone better tell me about it.
    Can't tell you how much I've lost these last 2 yrs but was fortunate to get my 2 weekly gigs back last March (though I was just informed one will be on hiatus until Easter) All of my private jobs (the ones that pay decent) have been non existent coming up on 2 yrs. I'm holding pretty good w gear so if I get in a bind I should be able to float for awhile.
    Maybe other people have extra dough re mi, but not me.

  15. #14

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    Sorry, didn't mean to insinuate that stimulus was purely surplus cash for luxury spend. I understand that there was need for it given the health crisis we went through. I meant to emphasize the indirect wealth that was created by stimulus for shareholders of FANG and other consumer tech stocks. Consumer spending went up tremendously (whether on luxury goods or necessities or new hobbies) and that benefited shareholders, who are driving up the value of vintage gear.

  16. #15

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    Let’s go over the definition of “stimulus” LOL…

    The goal was to stimulate spending, whether for toilet paper and vegetables and rent, or fancy guitars. It worked…and most would say kept us out of a depression.

    I don’t think that’s the main factor in the current increase in prices, but it is a contributor.

    Also, don’t forget there were a lot of people who were sitting at home with nothing to do, couldn’t eat out, couldn’t travel, so the idea of spending money for a non-essential item like a guitar was an easy call. And of course we were all depressed mentally with all the crap going on. What better way to deal with that, than a sweet 175?

  17. #16

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    Getting back to cars, there was an explosion in used car prices from before the pandemic. I recall an article in a major paper that followed one crappy Hyundai with a book value of $2500 that had sold 13 times in two years. It had made a hedge fund nearly ten times as much money in that time period.

    Apparently hedge funds (the canker warts on the lip of society) working with certain state legislatures “streamlined” the process of repossessing and reselling cars. They used to have to wait for a court date to establish the had the right to repossess and sell the car. Now they could put it back on the lot within hours of repossessing. Things could be “sorted” later if anyone was willing and able to successfully challenge them in court.

    It went like this:

    1) Hedge fund partners with used car lot financing the purchase of a lot full of cars from auction.

    2) A poor person desperate for a car so they can go to work walks onto a lot where “no credit—no problem”.

    3) Dealer sells them a crappy car with only $1000 down and unmakeable payments.

    4) Person makes $1000 in payments, but falls behind.

    5) Dealer repossesses the car immediately and puts the car back on lot.

    6) Dealer/Hedge Fund has collected $2000 in six months or less on a car that cost them $5000 at auction AND they have the car to sell again.

    7) Rinse and repeat.

    The pandemic only accelerated the process by making new cars more scarce. Seems like the pandemic has given free rein to all the monopolists, hedge fund managers, and usurious financial manipulators.


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  18. #17

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    Used car salesmen have had a bad name for close to a century, for good reasons. Even lawyers have a better reputation.

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by sgosnell
    We bought a new car at the best, or worst, of times. I'm still not sure. Bought it two years ago this month. Due to covid, it has 4500 miles on it. We could have gotten by with the older car my wife drives. One car is a pain in normal times, and I won't even think about driving hers on long trips, but these are not normal times. I took the car in early for the 5,000 mile service, and the dealer's service advisor chided me for waiting two years to have it serviced, even though it still hadn't reached the first service mileage. I haven't even looked to see what the car would cost now, but I assume it's much more. We did get a mailing from the dealer who sold us the other car, and the offer was for more than we paid for it new, and it's a 2017, albeit low mileage for its age. I thought about selling it to the dealer, but it was in a body shop for repairs after she was rear-ended by an uninsured driver. We're not in a bind for the money, so I haven't bothered to try to sell it. I don't see a severe shortage of used cars, though. There are a number of used car lots nearby, and they are all full of cars for sale.
    After a rear end accident every car’s value plummets. Thank goodness for carfax.