Buying and Selling Guitars. When to get help?

[martingitdave]

Happy to see this thread is getting additional views and hope it’s helping folks. I’d like to say that I’ve been “cured”, but that’s not realistic. I did get some help and I have reduced some of the buying and selling. More importantly, I’ve identified a solid stable of guitars that I play and don’t think about selling them for “something better.” And, the relationships are no longer impacted negatively, once I put some controls in place, which I’m happy for.

[BlueBowman]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

Happy to see this thread is getting additional views and hope it’s helping folks. I’d like to say that I’ve been “cured”, but that’s not realistic. I did get some help and I have reduced some of the buying and selling. More importantly, I’ve identified a solid stable of guitars that I play and don’t think about selling them for “something better.” And, the relationships are no longer impacted negatively, once I put some controls in place, which I’m happy for.

I'm happy for your progress, Dave. I've gotten a lot out of this thread, and I'm grateful you started it. Best wishes moving forward

Addiction to buying acoustic guitars runs in my family, believe it or not. My uncle and his son/my cousin, separately, have gone through multiple hundreds, and I know it has adversely affected one of them, if not both, greatly. With my uncle it's always been vintage Martins and top-of-the-line guitars. I think my aunt is thankful that he took up piano about five years ago, and that has completely ceased his guitar buying. No kidding. Less practical to keep a hundred pianos lying around! And he seems like a much happier person for it.

For myself, I understand the "something better" mentality all too well. But, I think once a certain caliber of guitar is reached (which will be different for us all), the "something better" simply becomes "something different."

Great thread.

[RP]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

...I’d like to say that I’ve been “cured”, but that’s not realistic. I did get some help and I have reduced some of the buying and selling. More importantly, I’ve identified a solid stable of guitars that I play and don’t think about selling them for “something better.” And, the relationships are no longer impacted negatively, once I put some controls in place, which I’m happy for.

Clearly, a lot of us can relate to the OP's plight. We joke about GAS, but it can be a really destructive addiction. More power to martingitdave for his candor and best wishes for him overcoming it.

Quite frankly, I don't have the stones to figure out all the guitars I've bought and quickly sold over the years nor the amount of money I've lost in the process. I feel like I've acquired the assortment of guitars that I want, and just hope that I can sustain it....

[Pickcity]

Good luck learning to be content, OP. It isn’t easy. Not for me.

We have to weigh which is a more important use of our time. Buying and collecting, or playing. They both demand time and I have resolved that playing is what it’s all about.

Of course I still look around and am often tempted.

I’m not through buying guitars, but I will drastically thin my herd before I bring in anything else. The ones I play now are more than adequate and I am happy with them.

I’ve never been a collector. I’m an accumulator. My accumulation has no rhyme or reason to it. It’s a gaggle of stuff that caught my eye and ear, and I brought it home with me. A little of everything from lower end to higher end.

Instruments are tools. I’ve used all of them to make sounds at some point in time.

Bottom line, I do not need anything. I have more than enough. At some point we no longer own “stuff”. It owns us. I don’t want that to happen to me.