Lloyd Loar F-5's down in price?

**Capt. E** · Jul-23-2017, 10:51am

Was just looking at the offerings from Gruene Guitars and noticed they have 4 LL Gibson F-5's...the two most expensive are $165K. One heavily re-built one ("new" neck) is $90K.

Best time to buy one?

**MikeEdgerton** · Jul-23-2017, 11:10am

The best time to buy one would have been between about 1944 and about 1965.

**Drew Streip** · Jul-23-2017, 11:51am

Originally Posted by Capt. E

Was just looking at the offerings from Gruene Guitars and noticed they have 4 LL Gibson F-5's...the two most expensive are $165K. One heavily re-built one ("new" neck) is $90K.

Best time to buy one?

Given that those have been there a while -- and so have the ones at Carter Vintage -- I'd say the best time to buy is "not yet."

I'd imagine they're all (or at least most) on consignment. So the sellers may eventually decide that, for example, $135K of "real" money is worth more than $165K of hopeful money.

That "cheap" Loar is nothing to sneeze at, though. I played it about a month ago, along with one of the $165K Loars (listed as MF8595 on Gruhn's site.)

**Bob A** · Jul-23-2017, 11:52am

I could've bought a Loar in 1971 for $5K, which I didn't have. Picked up an F4 instead, for a grand; took me a bit of time to scrounge up the cash. Always a day late and a dollar short.

Thanks to Ry Cooder, whose first album turned me onto mandolins.

**Benski** · Jul-23-2017, 12:25pm

I could've bought a Loar in 1971 for $5K...

That sure wouldn't have been such a bad deal...$5000 in 1971 equates to about $30,000 in 2017 dollars, per all those online inflation rate calculators...

Boy, if we could only go back....

**Mark Wilson** · Jul-23-2017, 12:45pm

History suggests that there is probably a easily available line of mandolins that will double or triple once they are no longer produced.
Maybe years from now we will be telling our story of the one we let slip away.

**Warren H** · Jul-23-2017, 9:11pm

When the pool of bluegrass musicians was much smaller and people were uncertain what mandolins even were, you could pick up instruments from the 1920s and '30s pretty cheap. The down side was that even though your bluegrass band was outfitted with killer pre-war Gibson and Martin instruments, nobody much cared. I mean, it was just hillbilly music, right?

Thanks to some variations of bluegrass edging into poplar music consciousness, folks today at least know the term "bluegrass." Festivals are attended by people who aren't necessarily hard-core bluegrass fans. Lots more players and wanna-be players are out there searching for the finite supply of nice old mandolins and guitars than there were 50 years ago.

It's interesting to note that Lloyd Loar's obituary--recently posted in another thread--contained no mention of F5 mandolins. I suspect that until the advent of the interweb, Lloyd Loar's name was known to far, far fewer musicians than today. We are victims of our own success, as far as the availability of fine old instruments goes. If a time comes again when bluegrass and related styles of music are disparaged by mainstream musical tastes, vintage mandolins will be cheap once more. Of course, nobody will care. It's just some kind of hillbilly stuff, right?

**Br1ck** · Jul-23-2017, 9:28pm

I intend to buy up all the 199.00 Michael Kelly mandolins. I have an agreement with Chris Thele to play one on his next tour. Then I'll sell them for $4,800, signed of course.So what if I have to give him a 60% share.