GUEST: It belonged to my grandfather. And after he passed away, it went to my dad. And I grew up with my dad playing a lot of jam sessions and family, friends all jamming, and now it's mine.
APPRAISER: Saturday night the guitar came out and friends came over?
GUEST: They did, yup. We lived in a rural area and that was their entertainment was family and friends playing and singing.
APPRAISER: And then you had a photo with you that... Is that your grandmother playing the mandolin in that picture?
GUEST: It is. We had a matching mandolin, but I don't know what happened with it. But we do still have the guitar and that was my grandpa playing the guitar.
APPRAISER: I love the rural story about the guitar. But most of the time people had lesser quality guitars. They bought the best model they could buy.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: This is called the... it says Style O in it, but really what it is, is it's known as a Style O Artist, because of this fancy scroll. The guitar serial number tells me that it's a 1917. Oh, '17. They're not extremely rare, but they're rare. They're the kind of guitar where everybody looks at it and goes, "This is an iconic guitar, it's beautiful." It is a beautiful shape. It's one of those shapes that's never gotten old, and it's a lovely thing. The guitar has been played a lot, and it's got quite a bit of wear on it. All loving wear.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: We left the pick in it to show that it wasn't just a prop. The finish, everything is original on the guitar. There's a little bit of damage. I'm not even going to bother to show it. On the back there's a crack in the heel, which is so common to this model. In fact, when I was talking with a friend of mine about the guitar, he said, "Does it have a cracked heel?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Most of them do." But otherwise, it's in really nice condition with honest play wear, which I like. Considering age, the condition, the original case, currently I would value this guitar in a retail environment at about $3,000.
GUEST: Great, great. That's awesome.
