Originally Posted to Quora
There are many changes to the market which have occurred over the last ten years. Going back a decade there was a huge change when Guitar Center really hit its stride and stores were popping up everywhere. With fast, exponential growth, the typically much smaller independent music shops began to suffer as they simply couldn’t offer the vast array of equipment and guitars at unbeatable prices. These shops, some of which had catered to a local customer base for generations, began dropping like flies until a fraction of the original number remained.
At the same time, e-commerce was changing retail shopping as we knew it and people began to buy more and more goods and services online while traditional “brick and mortar” shops began a precipitous fall from the American shopping landscape. What guitar shops remained were forced to change from the only way of doing business they’d ever known. Some of them were able to bridge the gap while others continued to wither or fall to the wayside altogether.
Then there was COVID which forever changed the world and was a boon to internet sales while people found themselves isolated and working from home, creating a virtual quarantine on the American way of life. For several years people were exchanging gym memberships for home exercise equipment and were biding their newfound time at home by taking up all sorts of hobbies, one of which was learning to play guitar. When the worst of COVID was over, many would-be players realized that learning to play wasn’t going to provide them with the instant gratification they were hoping to find and a large fraction of “COVID guitars” were dumped on the used guitar market. Soon, the market for guitars reached a point of oversaturation, forcing prices for both new and used guitars to drop to the point where profit margins for online guitar retailers became unsustainable. Another wave of shops, both brick and mortar and internet-based, was either operating at the bare minimum or making the hard choice to close its doors forever.
When combined, these changes have turned what was a seller’s market into one of the biggest buyer’s markets in the history of retail guitar sales. Once a great place to buy and sell guitars, online platforms such as Reverb and eBay increased their fees in an effort to remain competitive thereby increasing the cost of sales.
Fast-forward a few years from the worst of COVID and the mass exodus of COVID guitar buyers, and the market has yet to regain a modicum of stability. I am a long time player and collector but have backed away from my once highly productive and gratifying hobby of buying, selling, and trading guitars because there’s no longer money to be made on the selling side of the equation. My algorithm for being able to afford my collecting hobby was contingent on getting viable prices on my gently used guitars. I would find a great buy, play but keep the condition of my guitars pristine for several years, and flip them for more than I paid. This was possible if you knew what you were doing. My entire collection was acquired without any out-of-pocket expenditures other than the first couple of guitars to get me started. I’m retired and greatly miss being actively involved in the guitar market. I still play every day, but I’ve met a lot of good people and gotten through some difficult times with my health because of my small guitar business. But I really have nothing to complain about. I had a good run and have refined the collection I worked so hard to cultivate to the point where I couldn’t be any happier.
I’m not sure what the future holds for the guitar market (it’s complicated) but I think it will continue on this course for a few more years before leveling out. The upside is that it’s the best time in recent history to buy a new or used guitar. Just don’t plan on selling it for anything more than half of what you put in (even if you’ve gone to the trouble of keeping it in “mint” or “as-new” condition). I suppose if you can afford that kind of exchange rate, then, by all means, buy and sell away. But my advice would be to hold onto any guitar you buy and make the time and effort it takes to become a “guitarist”. Sure, it’s far more difficult than you imagined but so is anything else worth doing.
