Buying a used guitar that's been bought and sold several times

[Rosewood99]

I have found so many people on this forum that just get bored with the guitar they have and sell it. It would not give me pause at all. The exception being If it was bought and sold several times within the same year.

[jay7347]

Yep...

-jay

[brianlcox]

Originally Posted by blindboyjimi

If I buy correctly, then I usually can sell them for what I paid so I’ve rented the guitar for the price of shipping. I love to try 3-5 guitars a year and it costs me about $500. That’s a cheaper than a few rounds of golf or a couple of lift tickets.

Originally Posted by Methos1979

I think on AGF there are (or at least were) so many of us that were having a great time buying/trading/selling just to be able to try out new and cool guitars that we otherwise wouldn't have ready access to. I used to say that the first several years here on AGF for me were like a rental process where I would buy a guitar for a good used price, play it for several weeks or months and then move onto something else in an effort to figure out just what I wanted and needed in an acoustic guitar.

These are very true statements! I have done quite a lot of trading in the past years and was forced to sell some really nice guitars in order to have funds to try something new. Some of these guitars have been through multiple owners over several years, some people even owned the guitar two or even three times! After playing these guitars I was sometimes astonished that it had been sold. On the other hand, a couple times the guitar had some nagging issue that prevented bonding. I guess it happened to the previous owners too, which explains the guitar's history.

I also have bought a few guitars with string spacing or other aspects that I knew wouldn't work for me long term because I wanted to try something else about a brand. For example, I bought a Froggy Bottom about a year ago because I wanted to see what all the hype was about. Since then I have bought two more Froggy Bottom guitars in the past year in order to try different body shapes and wood combinations before finally custom ordering one with my desired neck shape and spacing. The two I have sold thus far were easily lifetime guitars, but they had to go (as I knew they would) as the necks were too narrow for me. The third one I bought this week and it hasn't come yet. However, I'm sure it will be for sale in 6 months when the custom comes, as the 1 3/4" neck and 2 3/16" bridge pin spacing is just too narrow for me. That doesn't mean that they aren't fantastic guitars that were hard to part with though!

[Pura Vida]

Originally Posted by UncleJesse

It’s a rare model and you google it and find previous listings where the wood grain matches up in the pictures.

Uncle Jesse: guitar forensics expert. Love it!

[rwmct]

IMO, it makes a difference who the sellers are. My 2011 Guild F-30 Std. was originally bought by a guy who posts on this forum and who then sold not long afterwards to a guy who posts on the Guild forum, who not long afterwards sold it to me. Neither of them found it to be a keeper.

The thing is, though, both of them owned multiple Guilds at the time, which had survived comparison to several others they had bought and moved on from over the years. A "keeper" to someone like that may be a rare guitar indeed. Me, I love the guitar and don't see myself ever selling it.

[Brent Hahn]

Originally Posted by Pura Vida

Uncle Jesse: guitar forensics expert. Love it!

There's some stuff online about authenticating the "newly rediscovered" Strat that Dylan used at Newport the year he went electric that's pretty interesting. And they're working from dodgy old photos.

[wguitar]

Well, I sold a guitar on AGF earlier this year and have seen it bought and sold 2 times since then. It's a very nice guitar (I was the 2nd owner) and only sold it because we never bonded and I had another that I had my eye on. I've also read a number of stories here on AGF of members buying back a guitar that they owned a year or 2 or however many years ago. For me, the AGF is a marketplace to explore guitars and, if one is not your cup of tea, then you can resell it on AGF. There are many good reasons why great guitars can be bought and sold multiple times on a forum like this, and the good news is that you can communicate with the seller on AGF -- often times with some familiarity from being on AGF (not always, but frequently). AGF seems to get you wanting more (or at least different) guitars. Life is good! Cheers!

[justonwo]

Yes, I usually avoid guitars that have been bought and sold a number of times. The only exception I can think of is my beloved Brondel A-2, which I sold. It changed hands a few times before I got it back, but it’s an exceptional instrument.