Original Price Of A Martin D-18?

[emjee]

I am watching Hawaii 5-0 and there is a guy playing one on the beach as if it's no big deal. Anyone know how much these cost back in '67 (at the time this was filmed?)

 

[zombywoof]

I believe the retail price was just under $300.

 

[lamenlovinit]

yeah, but there's the whole used thing. I believe I remember reading Steven Grossman talking about driving around the country buying used 45s for $700. Remember there was no internet. Used prices were way lower.

 

[newswede]

Though that $300 in todays money would be over $2k.

 

[mellecaster]

I believe the retail price was just under $300.

Good estimate...from Martin's own Book.... $ 295.00

[SIZE=+1]What cost $295.00 in 1967 would cost $1904.69 in 2010. [/SIZE]

 

[gitapik]

I payed $295 for mine in 1969.

 

[RustyAxe]

I am watching Hawaii 5-0 and there is a guy playing one on the beach as if it's no big deal.

It IS no big deal. It's a guitar, and like the old Guild ads say, it's meant to be played. Anywhere.

 

[gitapik]

It IS no big deal. It's a guitar, and like the old Guild ads say, it's meant to be played. Anywhere.

I hear ya, but only half way.

I'd take all my guitars to the beach, into the mountains, into the desert, etc. And I have some nice guitars. But if I buy a $10,000 Hernandez classical guitar for performance use, I'm not going to take it anywhere but out of it's case for when I practice or perform with it. Besides concerns of damaging it, nylon string guitars, especially, don't take to climate/weather changes very easily.

 

[RustyAxe]

I hear ya, but only half way.

I'd take all my guitars to the beach, into the mountains, into the desert, etc. And I have some nice guitars. But if I buy a $10,000 Hernandez classical guitar for performance use, I'm not going to take it anywhere but out of it's case for when I practice or perform with it. Besides concerns of damaging it, nylon string guitars, especially, don't take to climate/weather changes very easily.

Of course ... but that isn't what the OP was about, was it?

 

[paddywhack]

...in 1973 i was traveling through Greece with my D-35 when I met two other guitar players on the island of Corfu.....one of them had a D-28 and the other one had a D-18....we played on the beach every night for about a week and were treated like royalty by all the folks that gathered around to listen to us jam....closest i've ever been to paradise...

 

[gitapik]

Of course ... but that isn't what the OP was about, was it?

No, it isn't.

My bad...

 

[mad dog]

I paid 325 or so for a D-18 new in 1972.
MD

 

[davess23]

I was a kid n the mid to late '60's and I wanted a Martin, since the coffee house musicians I listened to mostly had them...but they were professional instruments and more expensive than the others, pretty much proportionately the same as the higher Martin models are today.

Remember, back then Martin didn't yet make lower-end stuff intended to compete with the cheaper guitars. The line pretty much began with D-18's, then D-21's (very few of those), D-28's, D-35's, D-41's and D-45's. And that was it as far as models were concerned. Nowhere near all the different ones they have now. And almost no small bodies were being made. I recall that when I jammed with a guy who had a 000-28 I couldn't get over seeing that rare, exotic Martin he was playing.

If I remember right, even a D-18 cost at least a hundred bucks more than a Gibson J-45 or J-50, which is what a lot of us wound up owning instead. $100 was a lot of money, back then. I finally got a D-28 around 1970. I think I paid $400 for it.