Grateful Dead Music Forum

Bonhams Dec 10 2019
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This is going to triple the estimate easily. I really wish this would just be in the Rock Hall where it deserves to be enshrined.

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/25922/lot/323/

Does anyone know the identity of the current owner/seller? Interesting this comes up now as I’ve been thinking about putting an “Alligator” together. Been looking at a lot of pics and doing a bunch of research.

Bill, tgo

The pictures on the website are incredible. Even that case makes me drool!
Does anyone know for sure that it is playable? Blaster is removed, volume pot gone too and showing bare wire underneath....

lbpesq wrote:Does anyone know the identity of the current owner/seller? Interesting this comes up now as I’ve been thinking about putting an “Alligator” together. Been looking at a lot of pics and doing a bunch of research.

Bill, tgo

I believe it is owned by the Garcia Estate which really means Deborah Koons Garcia.

A great day for "Save Picture As".

And the question becomes, how much will Jim Irsay have to spend to add this to his collection?

Looking at the back of the guitar for the first time, what do you think the plate on the back is made from? I would have thought it was brass but it kind of looks like wood?

kentuckykind wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2019 3:30 pm And the question becomes, how much will Jim Irsay have to spend to add this to his collection?

Looking at the back of the guitar for the first time, what do you think the plate on the back is made from? I would have thought it was brass but it kind of looks like wood?

agree it does look like MDF

Good catch. Looks more like solid wood- you can see the grain.

Anyone willing to wager a guess as to what this will go for? Personally I can't see it topping Wolf

I believe it will go for more than the $400,000 estimate, maybe $600,000 - 800,000. One thing that will keep it from going for Wolf value is the fact that it has been altered so much since the last time it was on stage and I doubt it would produce sound through amp currently. The volume pot and stratoblaster have been removed. As Alligator sits now, it is a display piece.

I'm gonna guess north of a million, but not by much.

It's all "funny money" to the people in this realm, so who knows. And I guarantee you, none of them give a wit about whether they can plug right in and dig into a Bertha. Volume pot, schmolume pot!

I'm more interested in seeing what those acoustics estimated at around 10K fetch. No real provenance other than Jerry "owned" them and they look a lot like the guitars he would have played with Grisman. That could mean almost anything - corner of the garage right next to Jerry's leaf blower. But still, I wouldn't mind a guitar like that. Or his leaf blower for that matter (and I HATE leaf blowers).

I went and saw it at the SF showing yesterday. It was so cool to see it in person and I got to speak to the guy at Bonhams for quite a while, since there weren't many people there.

- The back piece does indeed look like wood. It was hard to tell, even up close.
- It does play. The preamp was taken out while Jerry was still alive. Bonhams took it to Rick Turner at Alembic who originally did the modifications on it. Rick got it wired up so it does play through an amp. He had to fix a pickup or something, but they did as little as possible - just enough to get it playing.
- It's been in storage since Jerry died. I don't think it has made an appearance at all in that time.
- The stickers were so bright - really shocking after all those years,
- It really looked hand made. So rough. It had screws sticking out, etc.
- The frets didn't look to be in too bad condition.
- The case wasn't there - too bad.
- There was a lot of Jerry's stuff in the auction including some amps, clothing, comic books, and more.

Sold for $ 524,075 inc. premium

Here is the new owner

https://jambands.com/news/2019/12/13/je ... or-420000/