GUEST: This was my father's guitar. He was a sign painter by profession, but he had a passion for music, and he grew up in a family that had a lot of music in the home, and he played many instruments. He always aspired to have an electric guitar from, I think, the time they probably were invented. And this was his pride and joy. It's been sitting underneath my bed for...
APPRAISER: Really?
GUEST: ...since 19... you know, '86. And I let my son play with it when he was young, and there was a tremolo bar on there, and I think he somehow or other lost that along the way.
APPRAISER: It's a Fender Stratocaster. It was made in 1957. I'm going to pick up the guitar so we can start off with the back. It's a maple neck, which was made up until 1958, and this is what they call a skunk stripe. The other thing that lets you know that it's a '57 is that it's a two-tone sunburst. This finish, instead of being black to red to yellow is black to yellow. It's a non-laminated plate over the tremolo area on the back. I'm going to turn it around. And on the front of the guitar, you can see the neck has a maple fingerboard. I took the neck off earlier, and inside of here, there's a date of 8/57. And that matches with everything else that I saw on the guitar before I did this. So it made me feel comfortable in thinking it is that. This pick guard is right for the year. It's a non-laminated white pick guard with screws that don't look like they've really ever been off. All the parts, the colors, the patina of everything that I see looks right, looks really original, looks really nice. The tremolo bar, which would go in here, is replaceable. You can find that part. Has anyone given you any idea about the guitar as far as its value?
GUEST: Not at all, no. I ran across a magazine that told me I probably should be taking care of it, so that was all I did.
APPRAISER: Do you have any idea?
GUEST: The range in the magazine said it could be as high as, like, $3,000.
APPRAISER: I feel real comfortable in thinking that the value is significantly more than that. I would guess somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 to $17,000. It's a nice thing. You're very lucky.
GUEST: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my dad is smiling somewhere.
APPRAISER: So...
GUEST (laughs) That's terrific.
