1922 Gibson Style O Guitar with Case
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GUEST:
Well, I got it when was 13 years old. We did a family trip down to Texas like we do every year. And we went down to visit my great-uncle. And I had a guitar, cheap guitar. I was playing it, and he said, "I think I've got a guitar up in the attic." He says, "Climb up there and see if it's there." And he pulled it down and I opened it up and I couldn't believe what I saw. It smelled like Houston. It had been a long time since it had been opened. I think he said that his wife paid $200 for it in 1928. Which was a sizable amount then.
APPRAISER:
Yeah.
GUEST:
He said if I promised that I'd play it, I could have it. And I was just elated.
APPRAISER:
Nice. And so you played it for...
GUEST:
It was my main guitar for seven, eight years.
APPRAISER:
Did you play professionally and play...
GUEST:
A little bit, a little bit.
APPRAISER:
What kind of music did you play with this?
GUEST:
Mostly folk. Mostly folk music, at that time.
APPRAISER:
This guitar is made by the Gibson Company. It's a Gibson Style O. This guitar has a label, if you notice, in the sound hole, and a serial number in the 70,000 range, which dates it to 1922. And it's an unusual looking guitar with this large curled upper bass bout, and also the treble bout is an unusual shape. The entire guitar, actually, is very wide and broad, bottom and top. Starting in the late teens, Gibson made this model, the Style O. It has a carved spruce arch top. It's quite a guitar. It was the top of the line. Up until 1922, it did not have a truss rod, meaning there was no metal in the neck to keep it straight. In order to compensate for that and not have the guitar collapse on itself, it had a very thick baseball-bat-type neck that was almost unplayable. It was very difficult to play. The addition of the truss rod enabled them to slim down the neck and make it much more comfortable to play. The other interesting thing about this guitar is prior to this year, the tailpiece had a large celluloid piece up in the top and celluloid pins through it that didn't weather well. They fell apart. So this tailpiece was made in what they call the Lloyd Loar era of Gibson guitar making. It's a significant upgrade to the tailpiece that preceded it. So this is the first year that this guitar really became playable in a modern sense, and they made this up until the late 1920s. This is worth about $7,000 at retail.
(laughing)
GUEST:
Oh, really? Really?
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
Nice!
APPRAISER:
Less than half of these guitars that I've ever seen have their original case. At retail, if this guitar did not have its original case, it would only be worth maybe $4,000 to $4,500. So having the original case is really nice.
GUEST:
So it's $7,000, including the case.
APPRAISER:
Yes.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
This thing would bring $7,000 at retail today.
GUEST:
Nice, nice.
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