One time, not so long ago, I bought this lot of 24 guitars from Goodwill and here’s what I learned.
What did I buy?!
That question ran through my head a few times as I unloaded these from the back of my brother’s car. We had won this lot of guitars for about $250 total. He and I decided to go in on the lot 50/50. We had absolutely no idea what condition they were in or if we could find buyers.
What I did know is that, based on the pictures, I could at least make the money back in the reseller marketplace. I just didn’t know if we could show a positive ROI.
As we pulled these out of random cases for inspection, I took mental notes of the “good” ones.
“Here’s an old Harmony classical guitar. That should fetch $100 if we make a few repairs.”
“Here’s an electric bass. That’s probably $120.”
“There’s a Norma, probably $150 to the right buyer.”
“What the hell is this? A plastic toy guitar?”
Yes there were guitars of all shapes and sizes. The highlights included:
- An Ibanez acoustic in nice shape
- A Giannini Classical
- 2 Harmony classical guitars – one vintage 50’s/60’s and one newer one
- A Yamaha electric bass
- A mini “flying V” style guitar
But not everything was great. In this lot, we had several lemons including a Shoenhut children’s toy guitar, many First Acts and a couple of full size acoustics that needed work.
What was the plan?
Based off of what we new we had, we figured we could sell several of the guitars “as-is”. I was still new to eBay at this point, so I decided to test different selling styles. At first, we listed everything as a 7-day auction with the winning bidder paying the shipping. This resulted in most of our auctions closing without a sale. So I switched it up and tried adding “buy it now”, using local pick up, and playing with the shipping options.
Long story short, I found that the best way to sell a guitar on eBay is to price it at a fair price with the “Buy it now” option, promote it, and offer free shipping. You’d be surprised at how quickly a guitar sells when there is free shipping.
The guitars were flying out of the basement (this pleased my wife, she did not want them taking up space in the first place.) But we still had some work to do.
Guitars that needed fixing.
As I mentioned, there were several guitars that needed fixing. There was a Burswood and and Oscar Schmidt acoustic, both had the neck separating from the body.
How to fix this: This fix was relatively simple, we just needed to reset the necks. To do so, I put Titebond wood glue in the open space between the neck and body and then used rope to pull the neck back in. The rope went around the entire outside of the body and over the neck joint. I then tightened it up by using a stick to wrench the rope tighter. I left it to set for 2 days and “voila!” good as new!
The vintage Harmony had a beautiful, mellow tone. But the top and back were separating from the sides. To fix this, I used Titebond Hide Glue and long reach bar clamps around the outside edge. After a couple of day of setting, good as new as well.
Most of the guitars needed strings, so I took to Amazon to buy strings in bulk. You can find nylon strings here and steel strings here.
Guitars that could not be fixed.
There were a couple of guitars that were beyond repair. The mini-V that I mentioned earlier just wouldn’t/couldn’t stay in tune, so I salvaged the pickup and bridge and sold the guitar as a husk project for someone. There was a child’s toy guitar that I salvaged the tuning pegs and bridge from. And finally, there was a 3/4 size classical that was beyond repair, so I removed the neck and turned it into the cribbage board you see below.
The final result.
All in, we were able to realize a 2.5X return on the initial investment. And I stocked up on some spare parts. For the right price, I would definitely do this again.
