Local sells antique guitar for $7.5 million
A few years ago, Rehoboth Beach guitar maker Nicholas Lee made a relatively reckless online purchase in hopes of getting hardware he needed for a special guitar he was obsessing over.
He had no idea the guitar he bought for parts would turn out to be one of the first electric guitars ever made.
“I accidentally bought the rarest guitar in the world,” he said. He said he bought the guitar on eBay from a man in his 80s, who told Lee he inherited the instrument from his father, and that he might want to reconsider scrapping the guitar for parts.
By the time the guitar arrived, Lee had shifted his obsession to researching his new purchase. He hadn't seen any photos of the guitar he bought online, but when he opened the package, he realized his purchase wasn't so reckless after all.
“I was baffled because I'd never seen anything like it,” he said.
Lee said he recently sold the guitar, which he said has been identified by experts as one of the first full-scale Rickenbacker electric guitars ever produced, for $7.5 million, which would make it the most expensive guitar ever sold.
Guinness World Records states the most expensive guitar ever sold at an auction was a Fender Stratocaster signed by several rock stars including Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney that went for $2.7 million through the Reach Out to Asia campaign in 2005.
Drew Kavanaugh, a guitar salesman at the Chicago Music Exchange, said the price tag of Lee’s guitar sounds high and very suspect.
“The most expensive guitar I have right now is about half a million dollars,” he said, noting that the most expensive guitars sold at the shop have been around $1 million, including a Washburn guitar owned by Bob Marley.
Chicago Music Exchange Vintage Manager and head buyer Daniel Escauriza also was skeptical of the price tag. But, he said, “anything vintage is worth what someone is willing to pay.”
He said if it can be proven that the guitar truly is an early example of the first Spanish electric guitar, it likely would be worth a lot of money.
“It sounds like an amazing instrument, but it's the sort of thing that needs to be scrutinized, authenticated and gone over with a fine-tooth comb,” Escauriza said. “Rickenbacker was definitely up there when it comes to pioneering.”
While Lee said the buyer wishes to remain anonymous and few details about the guitar's future are publicly available, Lee said it was important to him that the guitar was sold to someone who would appreciate its historic value.
“I can say that it is very likely it'll be in a national museum close to the state of Delaware in the immediate future,” he said. “Guitar design hasn't changed. This instrument was the foundation for all future instruments.”
The 1935 electro-Spanish Rickenbacker guitar was the first commercially produced full-scale electric guitar and was also a commercial failure, Lee said. A few years later, the Los Angeles-based company stopped production because a different style of guitar produced by the same company was dominating the market. About 50 guitars like the one Lee recently sold were made during that time, and only a handful are known to still exist today, he said.
“A lot of people have been struggling to understand the historical aspect,” he said. Even though it was not a hit when it was first produced, the electro-Spanish Rickenbacker laid the foundation for current guitar designs, Lee said.
“The truth is, for me, I can't put a price on it because it's history,” he said.
Lee said his newfound fortune won't change him much – he'll still rock shoes with holes with them, ride around on his 2010 Yamaha scooter - but he hopes the money will help him refocus efforts on community service and nonprofit work, and give back to the man who sold him the guitar in the first place.
“My value is in life and in the merit of what you do, not in how many stacks you have,” he said. “I don't think my ethics will ever change. I have an incredible passion for animals and humans, and I definitely plan to do good things.”
Expert calls guitar sale 'fake news'
Guitar expert George Gruhn, who has been collecting guitars since 1963 and co-authored three books on the topic, seriously doubts the price tag and historical value of the guitar Nicholas Lee claims he sold to an unknown buyer for $7.5 million.
“I certainly urge enormous caution in spreading the word about this being a real sale,” he said. “It just smells about as bad as a three-week-old tuna in the middle of my living room. There's something that just doesn't add up here.”
He said while he has not seen Lee's specific guitar, he is familiar with the instrument, which typically sells for less than $5,000.
“There's no known guitar ever that has sold for that kind of money,” he said. He also said the 1935 model, which he said is a Ken Roberts electro-Spanish guitar, post-dates Rickenbacker's first electric Spanish guitar, which came out in 1932. “The historical significance is not what he claimed.”
And even if it was the very first of that particular model, a $7.5 million price tag is highly suspect, he said.
“If somebody was a megalomaniac, psychotic billionaire, they could pay that much. I think the chance the story is fake news is somewhere like 99.9 percent,” Gruhn said. “The Ken Roberts model didn't go on to ever become a good guitar. The model is frankly a piss-poor guitar. There's something extremely suspicious about it.”
Lee said he respects the skepticism, but maintains the guitar has historical significance.
“It's off-putting,” Lee said of the criticism. “And until the final check is in, there's no world record or anything of the sorts being broken. If I had the option to go back in time, it would be to discuss the guitar and historical significance only.”
