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Highest price ever paid for a Heritage guitar?


Vanschoyck

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A discussion over on Baywatch got me to wondering what the highest price ever paid for a Heritage might be.  Does anyone know?  They made a Golden Eagle a couple of years ago that was listed for about 9K, and since I don't see it available anymore I'm guessing it sold.  When I first became aware of the brand in the late 90's a little over 3k was about the most I ever even saw one offered for.  (I know, time . . . that old thing). I'm not necessarily looking for an exact number but maybe anecdotal info that you remember?  

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They made so many highly customized guitars, wouldn't that be difficult to know what sold for the most?

That said, wasn't the American Eagle one of their most expensive archtops ever offered as a regular series model?

image.jpeg.f4007d961aa7cba2c6088778380528b1.jpeg

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Centurian is truly museum-worthy! 

The Prince Golden Eagle will likely be the highest priced Heritage if ever sold at auction like his other custom guitars were.  Not my cup of tea, but fans love collectibles from their favorite artists.  Some of Prince's guitars sold for over $500k!

Here's a thread from 2016 discussing it FYI.

 

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1 hour ago, Gitfiddler said:

The Centurian is truly museum-worthy! 

The Prince Golden Eagle will likely be the highest priced Heritage if ever sold at auction like his other custom guitars were.  Not my cup of tea, but fans love collectibles from their favorite artists.  Some of Prince's guitars sold for over $500k!

Here's a thread from 2016 discussing it FYI.

 

Another look of it at Prince's home.

Princes guitars heritage.jpg

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I know what the highest price that I paid for a Heritage guitar. I won't discuss the price, but it was an Alex Skolnick signature H150

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9 hours ago, myoldfriend said:

That headstock is a work of art ?

That whole guitar is a piece of a craftsman's nightmare to build yet a stunning piece of eye-candy!

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  • 2 weeks later...
43 minutes ago, Genericmusic said:

I would imagine the most paid (retail) for a heritage would be one of the custom ghost made ones. I believe the DAngelico's retailed over $10,000 new. 

That's interesting, do you know about when that would have been?

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It may have been the Centurion.  But I don't know if that was even purchased or just awarded to someone by Heritage.

The most expensive model was the American Eagle.  It is likely that the first one of these cost Heritage the most to build.  They paid $500 per tailpiece after the prototype was made.  They also shipped it around to guitar shows, and they may have paid for an airline seat just for the guitar, something Gibbson did with some of their prototypes.  In today's dollars the list price would be somewhere between $15-20K.  They were over $10K years ago.

The ghost built large archtops would be steep, too.

The markup, wholesale to MSRP, was about 100%.  For example, if a guitar retailed at $4K, the dealer paid about 55% of that.  High volume dealers paid less than half.  So Heritage was not getting rich off even the expensive guitars they sold.  The company was a great value.  It probably still is.

Another answer to the broad question is that the Centurion is Heritage's most luxurious build, regardless of the money that changed hands.

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, MartyGrass said:

It may have been the Centurion.  But I don't know if that was even purchased or just awarded to someone by Heritage.

...

Another answer to the broad question is that the Centurion is Heritage's most luxurious build, regardless of the money that changed hands.

 

If there was ever a used Heritage that could command a $30,000 price tag that wasn't celebrity owned, it would be the Centurion. 

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