Musical Instruments

1964 Gibson ES 335 Guitar

Appraisal: 1964 Gibson ES 335 Guitar

Transcript

GUEST: Well, I traded a 1939 Chevrolet for it in 1971, and the guy I traded it off of said he bought it in California when it was new, I'm assuming.

APPRAISER: Uh-huh.

GUEST: He played country and western music.

APPRAISER: Uh-huh.

GUEST: I've always played rock and roll and country and western with it.

APPRAISER: So you've used-- you've been using them?

GUEST: I haven't used it in some years, but back in the '70s, I did quite a bit.

APPRAISER: Uh-huh.

GUEST: I played a lot of barn dances.

APPRAISER: (laughs) So do you... do you remember how-- what was the value of the car you traded for this?

GUEST: About $600 to $800, I'm, was what it was worth.

APPRAISER: But that was quite a while ago. This is one of the iconic guitars. It's the 1964 Gibson ES-335.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: This guitar has a maple body with a... a rosewood fingerboard, the banding all the way around on both sides. And it was one of the two designs that... that, really, were just iconic, classic guitars. The... of course, the other one was the Les Paul. It was a, a combination of the solid body and the hollow body, which gave it kind of the best of both worlds. And it was able to eliminate the feedback you often got from the hollow-bodied guitars. It came out in 1958, went through a few other variations. It had different pickups on it. It had what were called P.A.F. pickups, and they discontinued those in 1962 and went with these. This model guitar was used by a lot of famous artists-- Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Keith Richards-- but it was really championed and became really popular when Eric Clapton started using it. And he started using it when he was with Cream.

GUEST: Yeah, he's one of my heroes.

APPRAISER: Again... Yeah? Mine, too. This guitar came in different color variations. This is the regular sunburst. Also, Eric Clapton's was a cherry red. That guitar from 1964 that Clapton used was recently sold at an auction. And it just went... of course, because it was his...

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: ...that guitar sold for over $800,000.

GUEST: Whoa. Eric.

APPRAISER: But that was a celebrity... A celebrity guitar.

GUEST: Yeah, Eric.

APPRAISER: But this guitar is just so iconic, so classic. Do you have any idea what the value of this would be today?

GUEST: Well, I was offered $1,500 for it in 1992.

APPRAISER: Well, today, this guitar, at a retail price, would be $12,000 to $12,500.

GUEST: (laughs)

APPRAISER: So, that was a pretty good deal for trading the...

GUEST: Yeah, that old car is long gone.

APPRAISER: That car's long gone, yeah, yeah.