I wouldn't spend $300K for this--



but I would be tempted for this--

Gee, I posted that a couple months ago and didn't include the link to the article so it doesn't really make much sense.

There was an auction of a bunch of GD stuff from the estate of Ramrod, their head roadie.  The first guitar above, a Travis Bean, sold for $300K.  

The second one above, "Wolf", totally unrelated to the sale, is the first custom Irwin built for Garcia.  It's one of my all time favorite guitars ever.  

--Last edited by kvk on 2007-06-11 10:57:05 --

There is a little bit of a controversy regarding that specific Travis Bean.  

The serial number doesn't match the TB that Jerry played for a couple years.  From an employee of TB, Garcia's Bean was sent back to the factory for neck repair.  Rather than repairing the one he had been playing, they shipped him a new guitar.  Meanwhile, Garcia switches guitars to one of the Irwins.

So it looks like someone payed 300K for a guitar that Garcia may or may not have ever played on stage...

Copied from another forum
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Jerry Garcia's White Travis Bean 1000A sold for $312,000 at auction last week. It is well known that Garcia played a white 1000A from 1975 until sometime in Summer/Fall 1976 when he switched to a Bean 500 with single coil pickups.

The mystery is this: the serial number on the guitar that sold was #715. Travis Bean aficionados (like myself) know full well that Bean serial numbers are the best way to date those guitars. #715 would not have been constructed until 1976 (or perhaps even 1977). The story gets stranger. The guitar sold at auction #715 has unusual black single coil pickups and an extra switch in the center of the 4 knob cluster. All the photos we can find of Garcia with his Bean 1000A show it with stock silver covered pickups and no extra switch.


A fellow has now come forward with photographs of the white body of Travis Bean #51. He works with a man who worked at the Travis Bean factory in 1976. According to him, Garcia had a problem with his Bean and sent it back to the factory for repairs. It was damaged and they sent him #715 as a replacement. You can read a lengthy discussion of this topic on the Travis Bean web site forum -
http://www.travisbeanguitars.com/index.php/ID/b75d884ce446bcfce098481... useaction/forum.view.htm#b305bd83ce52c79b808fadf238862a61


It seems quite likely that someone paid $300K for a guitar that Garcia may never have played on stage.


Can anyone here confirm the serial number of Garcia's original White TB 1000A? Thanks very much.

Thanx for the info md.  Very interesting.

Not sure if anyone is interested, but here is a clip of Jerry playing one of the Beans.  Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUHKNsvM98Y