SOLD: Gibson Les Paul Studio

You win.

After months and months of vacillating between wanting to sell and not, I finally found a buyer who paid my asking price without much of a haggle. So yes, for the third time in my life, I've failed to bond with a Gibson, and for the second, I've sold a wine red Studio.



After posting the guitar for more than a month, an extremely eager buyer asked a rapid succession of questions:

  1. When can I check it out?
  2. Will you take less than asking?
  3. Are you free yet?
  4. Can I check it out now?
Clearly, the hard sell wasn't going to be required here, but a funny thing happened once it was clear this hombre was serious - I got cold feet.  Was I really ready to sell this? Wouldn't I regret it in a few months?  Could I really live with my brother being right again? 

With these questions swirling around my head, I "forgot" to bring the guitar the first day we had agreed to.  It wasn't entirely on purpose, but a late morning combined with uncooperative children in the first week or so of a new school year combined to provide the perfect storm of convenient forgetfulness.  

Truth be told, I remembered whilst backing my car out of the driveway, but my mental state at the time concluded very quickly that this was a driveway too far, and turning back to get the guitar would be a fools errand.  

Again, I hadn't quite made it to the end of the driveway.

When I reached the office, I hedged and set the potential buyer an apologetic email:

"Sorry, forgot. Can bring tomorrow.  Cool?"


Disappointed, the buyer asked if there was any way we could make today happen.  There wasn't, but I was starting to wonder why this guy was so eager. Seemed awfully strange, but it turns out that the buyer wasn't a player at all, but a father buying for a teenaged son's birthday. That sort of thing is time sensitive I guess, and in retrospect I hope I didn't end up disappointing junior on his birthday.

Seriously though, the guys dad bought him a Les Paul Studio for his frickin' birthday.  I'm not going to feel too guilty. This guy wasn't some BMW driving douche who had more money that brains either.  I mean, he noted his work schedule a couple of times (shift work?), so while I can't speak to the kind of scratch the guy was pulling down, he didn't come off like Gordon Gecko with a kid.

Long winded way of saying he wasn't a douche.

Money in hand, he came to my office, had me test the guitar, noted the good condition, paid and left guitar in hand.  The immediate sense of loss I felt was quickly replaced with the realization that I now had a pretty good amount of scratch to play with.

For what it's worth, it helps that I sold it for exactly what I paid two years ago. If that doesn't convince you to buy used...

So... What should I buy next?...



 

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