2 Marvs and met another forumer

[JimN]

I paid £80.00 for my 1964 Burns Marvin in 1969. Still got it and I only paid £35.00 for my Baldwin Double Six in Green in 1971.
Stu

Those were the days, eh?

I paid £110 in 1972 for a 1965 Burns Marvin.

And £170 in 1979 for the '66 Fender Electric XII in my Avatar pic.

I distinctly remember a musical colleague paying £12 (yes, twelve English pounds) for an immaculate Burns Vista Sonic (complete in case) in 1968. Another friend paid £15 around the same time for a completely white version of the Vista Sonic (again, complete with case).

JN

[Hank2k]

do you still have either of them Jim?

[JimN]

If you mean the Burns Marvin and the Fender Electric XII, I still have both of them.

JN

[Uncle Fiesta]

Never heard that as a vocal before!

[Graylion]

Time for some nostalgia

A great song from the best of Cliff's musicals, according to the expert. (My wife, who's a dyed-in-the-wool Cliff fan!) Mainly because the Shads wrote all the music!

[Graylion]

I paid £80.00 for my 1964 Burns Marvin in 1969. Still got it and I only paid £35.00 for my Baldwin Double Six in Green in 1971.
Stu

Those were the days, eh?

I paid £110 in 1972 for a 1965 Burns Marvin.

And £170 in 1979 for the '66 Fender Electric XII in my Avatar pic.

I distinctly remember a musical colleague paying £12 (yes, twelve English pounds) for an immaculate Burns Vista Sonic (complete in case) in 1968. Another friend paid £15 around the same time for a completely white version of the Vista Sonic (again, complete with case).

JN

I just LOVE doing this when people say things like "In 1965 it only cost me £Xxx..". There's a little thing called inflation that us older folks tend to ignore when looking back through our rose-tinted glasses. This paints an entirely different picture and whacks you with a piece of reality! There are probably many sites that have an instant calculator to compare values over different periods, but I always use this one - http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bill ... -1900.html It probably only goes up to early 2011 but it's good enough to give you a shock when you realise how much musical instruments, and a lot of other things, really cost at today's values. You could add a few more % to get to 2012 values. Comparing wages is never realistic as it is very slewed, because of the minimum wage for one thing, but all values are normally quoted in relation to inflation. Below I'll give the old cost and today's equivalent. I'll omit the pence! and round up to the nearest pound

£110 in 1972 = £1,225
£80 in 1969 = £1,094
£35 in 1971 = £427
£170 in 1979 = £768
£12 in 1968 = £172
£15 in 1968 = £215

My own 1961 Vibra Artiste (Burns own spelling) cost me £62 secondhand at the end of 1962 = £1,088.
The last price I have for Vista Sonics is from 1963 when the standard 6-string split sound version was £109-4s = £1,838 Without Split Sound it was £97 - 13s = £1,643 Can you BELIEVE that? (Interestingly they weren't available in white.) A much rarer beast would be the Vista Sonic 6-string bass at £129-3s = £2,174. PHEW!!! Perhaps they are not the tremendous bargains we thought them to be?

The picture would be worse if you tried to use wages - not easy to do a realistic comparison but they were comparatively poor in the 1960s anyway.

So - in "The good old days" things cost and arm and a leg and don't let anyone tell you different!
Cheers, Lionel

[JimN]

I paid £110 in 1972 for a 1965 Burns Marvin. And £170 in 1979 for the '66 Fender Electric XII in my Avatar pic. I distinctly remember a musical colleague paying £12 (yes, twelve English pounds) for an immaculate Burns Vista Sonic (complete in case) in 1968. Another friend paid £15 around the same time for a completely white version of the Vista Sonic (again, complete with case).
JN

I just LOVE doing this when people say things like "In 1965 it only cost me £Xxx..". There's a little thing called inflation that us older folks tend to ignore when looking back through our rose-tinted glasses. This paints an entirely different picture and whacks you with a piece of reality! There are probably many sites that have an instant calculator to compare values over different periods, but I always use this one - http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bill ... -1900.html It probably only goes up to early 2011 but it's good enough to give you a shock when you realise how much musical instruments, and a lot of other things, really cost at today's values. You could add a few more % to get to 2012 values. Comparing wages is never realistic as it is very slewed, because of the minimum wage for one thing, but all values are normally quoted in relation to inflation. Below I'll give the old cost and today's equivalent. I'll omit the pence! and round up to the nearest pound

£110 in 1972 = £1,225
£80 in 1969 = £1,094
£35 in 1971 = £427
£170 in 1979 = £768
£12 in 1968 = £172
£15 in 1968 = £215

My own 1961 Vibra Artiste (Burns own spelling) cost me £62 secondhand at the end of 1962 = £1,088.
The last price I have for Vista Sonics is from 1963 when the standard 6-string split sound version was £109-4s = £1,838 Without Split Sound it was £97 - 13s = £1,643 Can you BELIEVE that? (Interestingly they weren't available in white.) A much rarer beast would be the Vista Sonic 6-string bass at £129-3s = £2,174. PHEW!!! Perhaps they are not the tremendous bargains we thought them to be?
The picture would be worse if you tried to use wages - not easy to do a realistic comparison but they were comparatively poor in the 1960s anyway.
So - in "The good old days" things cost and arm and a leg and don't let anyone tell you different!
Cheers, Lionel

Some things did, but secondhand guitars - depending on the model - could be a bargain, especially towards the end of the sixties when the beat boom had died off a bit and many of its practitioners were settling down and needed to buy prams, put deposits on secondhand cars, etc.

So my £110 Marvin in 1972 would now cost £1225 if adjusted for inflation? Lead me to these original Burns Marvins for £1225 in 2012 - I'll have two!

And the Fender Electric XII (£170 in 1979) for £768 in today's values? Have you tried getting one for less than two grand? Last time I was at the Hollywood Guitar Centre (a few months ago), they had one for $4,500 and it wasn't as nice as mine is...

But these weren't the real bargains. Those secondhand Burns guitars for £12 and £15 (all secondhand Burns guitars except the Marvin, Shadows Bass and the Double Six went for peanuts at the time) would now cost about £200 if simply adjusted for inflation. But is it now possible to find an original, complete, Burns guitar with case for that sort of money? I don't think so...

JN

[Graylion]

Jim, you've missed my point entirely! You are talking about the appreciating value of classic/old guitars - what they are worth now. I was comparing costs and showing how much things were in the old days. You need to compare those costs with prices of current guitars. Not only that, people often genuinely think stuff was relatively much cheaper then - I'm showing that it really wasn't.

[Iain Purdon]

I'm with you Lionel. It fits my recollection of being unable to afford things in those days.

[JimN]

Jim, you've missed my point entirely! You are talking about the appreciating value of classic/old guitars - what they are worth now. I was comparing costs and showing how much things were in the old days. You need to compare those costs with prices of current guitars. Not only that, people often genuinely think stuff was relatively much cheaper then - I'm showing that it really wasn't.

Oh, I'm with you on that.

But, for a while, aided by changes in music and the aging of the boomer generation, s/h stuff really was available for a song. Not Les Pauls, but certainly Burns guitars and Vox amps.

JN