Haha!įor a while, I thought Les Pauls were going to go the way of Harleys. I'll get to own the stuff for 10 years until I need to sell it. I'm GEN X, so, if it ever happens, I won't benefit much. I keep thinking guitars are going to get cheaper as boomers need to fund their retirement. They carry with them some sentimental value for me. They are good guitars for what I paid for them. There have been times when you couldn't throw away a Kramer even in pristine condition. As of now the market goes nuts for "anything 80s". Just let us and the Boomers unload and we are back to normal. Thanks to the guy hosting this forum, and nice to meet you all! I was hoping that it would be thought provoking and it absolutely was. The ESP components truly were second to none. And given that's what an American Strat costs, and something like half of what a new Les Paul costs, that cost is justifiable. Now, seems like you can find a good specimen at $1,500 or so. I've seen some at $2,000 and more and I bet during covid, a few units sold for that kind of money. Obviously, the sky is the limit with these guitars and pricing. But things like this tend to ratchet prices upward and it's hard to get back to the "before times". And like somebody said, they may come back down a little bit. I do think today's valuations are a little bit covid inspired. I just made the mistake of thinking they'd always be undervalued. That was their big appeal to a lot of us, I think. So, finding a good-condition Kramer is harder than it should be.Īlso, a great point that they were undervalued.
Plus, I think a lot of folks did what I did: since the guitars were perceived not to have any collector's value, they weren't afraid to mod them out. And once that became uncool, it probably hurt the desirability of these guitars quite a bit.Īnd yep, like land, they can't make any more 80s Kramers. A kramer (especially the pointy headstock years) just SCREAMS 80s glam metal. The insight about Grunge killing these guitars is also a big factor, I think. Thanks for all these great comments, folks! There's some great insight, there.