Before you go reaching for that credit card, this is a Guitar Trader ad from 1979.Original 1960 Les Paul's these days go for slightly more than $3000. Somewhere in the vicinity of 20 times that amount to be exact -- an appreciation of 2000% over a 30 year period! Not bad considering the Standard's original retail price of $280 in 1959.
But as they say, hindsight is always 20/20.
And vintage guitars continue to be quietly traded to this day, bought and sold by affluent collectors and players who speculate that prices will sky-rocket even more.
Interestingly, in the early 80's, Guitar Trader cooperated with Gibson to release a limited production run of Les Paul's made to 1959 specs -- probably one of the first such production partnerships.
The guitars were produced in Gibson's old Kalamazoo, Michigan factory and were extremely faithful reproductions thanks to the vintage experts at Guitar Trader who pursued replicating all details of the '59 Les Paul Standard to the nth degree.
The first few instruments produced in the run also featured original old-stock Gibson Patent-Applied-For (PAF) pickups from Guitar Trader's own personal inventory of vintage spare parts. Talk about adding value!
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