Hey everyone...I got a call from a reprter in Cape Cod a few days ago...they were doing a short piece on a Les Paul that went for over a quarter million dollars at auction, and asked me to yak a bit. I obliged.
A fraction of my yakking made it in, and is below in the article. I hope the new owner will actually play it, and not stick in a showcase never to be heard again!
please visit my main site for more on guitars, guitar repair and guitar making!
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Cape Cod Times April 1, 2007 Les Paul sells for a cool quarter-mil By MARY ANN BRAGG STAFF WRITER EAST DENNIS - A rare Gibson electric guitar sold for a quarter of a million dollars yesterday in a tense, two-man bidding contest at a local auction house. A New York man bought the 1957 Gibson Les Paul Custom ''Black Beauty” guitar, built for a left-handed player, for $247,000 at Robert C. Eldred Co. Inc., according to auction spokesman Robert Eldred.
The sale was one of the 10 highest in the auction's 55-year history, but not so rare off-Cape, according to Huntington, N.Y., custom guitar maker and Gibson repairman S.B. MacDonald, who has an international clientele. ''They go for a ridiculous amount of money,” MacDonald said. ''Any of those late '50s and early '60s are the most prized of all. They were built in the golden era of Gibson guitar building, when they were still being made by the very skilled Kalamazoo (Mich.) guitar makers, the factory workers. To date, even the current Les Pauls can't hold a candle to those.”
The buyer, whose name was not disclosed by the auction house, paid $210,000 as the high bid, plus an auction house commission, Eldred said. The guitar is one of 283 ''Black Beauty” models made by Gibson in 1957 and was part of the estate of former Cape Cod Hospital chief of staff Dr. Robert Barry, according to the auction company's Web site. Barry, who died Oct. 10, wrote and played music on guitar and piano, according to the Times archive. He purchased the ''Black Beauty” new, and the instrument and other items from his home were part of an auction Friday and yesterday. ''We don't know who (the buyer) bought it for,” Eldred said. ''We have our suspicions. He kept pushing the bid up. I had no idea how far he would go. Obviously, it was very exciting.” For Eldred's, which has been in business since 1952, the guitar sale was a rarity; the company's highest single sale was close to a half-million dollars.
''Think of this,” guitar specialist MacDonald said of the price. ''In the violin world, that's nothing for a fine violin.” Gibson moved its world headquarters to Nashville, Tenn., in 1984 after the closing of the Kalamazoo plant, according to material on the company's Web site. The Les Paul guitar, which is named after the renowned American guitarist Les Paul, debuted in 1952.
Whoa. I was best friends with his son Bob Barry in the early 90s and we used to beat the SHIT out of that guitar. We had no clue it was such a gem
Posted by: Jeff | July 15, 2010 at 10:00 PM