Collectible Guitar Spring 2026 | Page 98

PRE-WAR MARTIN WORTH

The examples that exist are the guitars that will ever exist, and yet within that fixed population, price swings wildly depending on which instrument and in what condition. The difference between original finish and overspray, between an intact bridge plate and a replaced one, between forward-shifted scalloped bracing and later rear-shifted geometry, can move six figures. Detail matters here in a way it rarely does elsewhere in the instrument market.

A 1982 Guitar Trader price guide listed pre-war D-45s at $ 7,000. By 1995 they were trading around $ 100,000. A 2005 publication noted a listing at $ 135,000. In 2011, Vintage Guitar magazine ranked the 1936 – 1942 D-45 first among the most valuable guitars in existence, placing the range at $ 250,000 to $ 400,000. George

Gruhn observed at the time that pre-war D-45s were fetching more than twenty times the price of a current production D-45, despite the relatively modest design differences between them. Today, prime examples cluster between $ 350,000 and $ 520,000. The trajectory across four decades is not a straight line— nothing in this market is— but the direction has not reversed for long.

Two 1941 D-45s were offered simultaneously by dealer Atwell Strung: serial number 78629 at $ 450,000, serial number 77062 at $ 419,995. George Gruhn sold serial number 79583— which had brought roughly $ 200,000 at Skinner Auction in 2011— for $ 450,000 in a recent private sale, more than doubling its auction result in a little over a decade. Carter Vintage Guitars recently carried a prime example at $ 475,000. The Blue Book of Guitar Values places clean original instruments in the $ 350,000 to $ 500,000 range. Refinished or oversprayed examples land at approximately $ 150,000 to $ 200,000— a steep discount that reflects one governing principle: originality, once compromised, cannot be restored.

The Blue Book further notes that of the 72 instruments currently accounted for in the market, 25 have been refinished or oversprayed. That means roughly a third of all known D-45s carry the valuation penalty. The remaining original examples grow scarcer— and more contested— with each passing year.

Private transactions above $ 1 million exist, though they are difficult to document precisely. The Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum has recorded discussion of at least one such sale: the Bob Wills 1941 D-45( serial number 79586) changed hands quietly with no public pricing. Instruments with celebrity ownership chains— the Marty Stuart / Johnny Cash D-45 at Belmont University, the four D-45s in the Steven Kern Shaw collection now donated to Belmont, the Japanese

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