Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

It belonged to my grandfather. And after he passed away, it went to my dad. And I grew up with my dad playing a lot of jam sessions and family, friends all jamming, and now it's mine.

APPRAISER

Saturday night the guitar came out and friends came over?

GUEST

They did, yup. We lived in a rural area and that was their entertainment was family and friends playing and singing.

APPRAISER

And then you had a photo with you that... Is that your grandmother playing the mandolin in that picture?

GUEST

It is. We had a matching mandolin, but I don't know what happened with it. But we do still have the guitar and that was my grandpa playing the guitar.

APPRAISER

I love the rural story about the guitar. But most of the time people had lesser quality guitars. They bought the best model they could buy.

GUEST

Uh-huh.

APPRAISER

This is called the... it says Style O in it, but really what it is, is it's known as a Style O Artist, because of this fancy scroll. The guitar serial number tells me that it's a 1917. Oh, '17. They're not extremely rare, but they're rare. They're the kind of guitar where everybody looks at it and goes, "This is an iconic guitar, it's beautiful." It is a beautiful shape. It's one of those shapes that's never gotten old, and it's a lovely thing. The guitar has been played a lot, and it's got quite a bit of wear on it. All loving wear.

GUEST

Yes.

APPRAISER

We left the pick in it to show that it wasn't just a prop. The finish, everything is original on the guitar. There's a little bit of damage. I'm not even going to bother to show it. On the back there's a crack in the heel, which is so common to this model. In fact, when I was talking with a friend of mine about the guitar, he said, "Does it have a cracked heel?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Most of them do." But otherwise, it's in really nice condition with honest play wear, which I like. Considering age, the condition, the original case, currently I would value this guitar in a retail environment at about $3,000.

GUEST

Great, great. That's awesome.