bones12
Sep-26-2004, 7:20am
With the recent onslaught of hurricanes, floodings, fires and other natural disasters, I was wondering if any one as any rough idea of how many vintage mandolins are lost to these each year. How many get thrown away by families unaware of the importance of them? Any idea of a scientific estimate of mandolins lost each year? We know the production numbers from Gibson but does any one have good guesses about remaining stock? Any knowlede of insurance claims, etc. Just how common is an A2Z or an F4 circa 1924? I have several stories of great mandolins rescued from dumpsters and fireplaces! Anyone care to venture percentages lost each year/decade? Just wondering, Doug.
I've got records for nearly 3,000 1902-1930 mostly mandolins from Gibson. I'd reckon I add at least 5-10/week from eBay alone.. and I'm probably not seeing much more than a tiny percentage of them. I've only beeen looking for about 9 months + records from some of the big dealers.
Theoretically, serials started at 2500, and go up to around 100,000 by WWII. figure that's 98,000 instruments. A percentage of those were guitars, harp guitars, mandolas, cellos, etc. Maybe the majority (40%?) were mandolins.. so still that's 35,000 or so. They're pretty well-made in general, though a lot of dead ones turn up. As far as total output in the Loar period.. say that's around 1923-1925. That's about 11,000 instruments total.. you can begin to guess. I'm filling in some of the details on instruments, but I suppose I tend to get more of the oddballs in the archives as collectors tend to know more what they are etc. Oh well, ask me again in 10 years http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif