[Jim]

Gbase is a place that is worth looking at, but you must keep in mind that those prices are not realistic either. Those are guitar stores and dealers who are trying to get very full to well above retail prices that a private seller can not hope to get. Most of the reason the dealers advertise there is to 'establish a market value' so they can begin bargaining with potential buyers from a high price to eventually get down to the actual price they sell things for. And sometimes they even are able to get gullible people to pay those extreme prices.

Appraisals of guitars or jewelry or whatever are likewise of minimal use - the standard appraisal is for about twice what a normal selling price would be. The reason is appraisals are done for the insurance industry and not for the actual selling market. Also, most appraisers are not expert enough to know when there is hidden damage so they give a value for something in excellent condition.

Ebay is usually the best place to find real values, but you have to understand that at between half to 80% of the auctions there have to be ignored as being irrelevant. First, you need to ignore any auction where the guitar did not actually sell. Asking prices and hidden reserves are common and often used by professional guitar sellers who are working Ebay to try to get full retail prices. The second kind of auction to ignore is more difficult to spot. More than a few sellers are professionals who use schill bidders to drive up the auctions and 'establish' overly high selling prices. This is not allowed by Ebay but their policing is minimal and it goes on all the time. This is where a professional seller creates a number of Ebay accounts under different names and builds up their feedbacks with legitimate buying and selling. They then use these accounts to bid up auctions for their high priced items hoping to trick a real bidder into getting into the bidding and 'winning' the auction at a price far above what would have been the case had it been only legitimate bidders going after it. Even in the case where such a seller 'wins' their own auction and they buy it from themselves they make out well since they have now 'established' a track record of a silly high price for their guitar which they then sneak back into an Ebay auction in a couple of months and they are more likely to sell it at their price. They have also added positive feedbacks to both their seller account to their schill bidder account.

You need to talk to your friend and manage their expectations way downward. Their guitar has some unrepairable damage in the soundhole enlargement short of completely replacing the top, a very costly and truly major repair. There is also likely a number of other repairs that will be needed for this model and year of Martin which has been mentioned is one of the least desireable ones in terms of quality and playability. If you want to get the actual value for it for your friend, go ahead and put it up for auction on Ebay with no reserve and a very, very low starting bid. Make the auction a good one by having at least a dozen very clear, well lit, sharp and crisp photos of the overall guitar from all angles and of all of the details. Include a well written description and avoid silly sales hype as that turns off serious bidders. Let people know it is a no reserve auction and the guitar will go to the high bidder. Do not try to make money on the shipping - make the shipping cost the actual amount. You will need an iron stomach because the bids will be way low until the last 60 seconds when the snipes with the real bids come flooding in. There are so many buyers on Ebay looking for name brand guitars that you will not wind up selling it far below its real value. You just need to understand that the real value is going to be much less than what your friend's emotions and personal attachment to the guitar actually are. You are selling a seriously damaged guitar, there is no way around that.