This is something you don’t see very often: a one-owner vintage 1960 Les Paul is being auctioned this weekend:
The electric guitar — a 1960 model, serial number 0-0234, its color shading from honey to dark red and with Bigsby vibrato — set Harry back $320. Its estimate in Saturday’s sale: $20,000 to $30,000. It could fetch quite a bit more.
$20,000 to $30,000 seems awfully low for a ’60 Les Paul, but there is this issue:
Harry’s guitar is not flawless. Its pickups were replaced at some point. They bear a patent number, as opposed to the legend “Patent applied for” that the originals bore. And there’s some wear on the frets. That might keep it out of the fiscal stratosphere (holy grail Les Paul Sunbursts have sold for upward of $200,000), but it should still be a nice chunk of change for a guy who can use it.
It will be interesting to see how much the lack of the original PAF pickups will drop the price. I still think it’ll fetch closer to $100,000 than the $20,000-30,000 estimate.
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