Fiduciary Magazine

Archive for the ‘Collectibles’ Category

This is a great article from The New Yorker called Publish or Perish.

It discusses the e-book business and the iPad and Kindle, the latter of which I own. All of the books I review are sent to me for free and I usually give them away once I’m done with them.

Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price. On a twenty-six-dollar book, the publisher receives thirteen dollars, out of which it pays all the costs of making the book. The author gets $3.90 in royalties. Bookstores return about forty per cent of the hardcovers they buy; this accounts for $5.20 per book. Another $3 goes to overhead costs and the price of producing and shipping the book—leaving, in the best case, about a dollar of profit per book.

Why, Mossberg asked, should consumers “pay Apple $14.99 when they can buy the same book from Amazon for $9.99?”

“That won’t be the case,” Jobs said, seeming implacably confident.

Autoblog featured this very exclusive muscle car auction. If you were born more than 40 years ago you most likely will find a car at this auction that you used to dream about.

On June 19th RM Auction will be auctioning a private collection of over 80 American muscle cars and you’ll likely be able to be able find your new dream ride than for much less than prior to the economic crisis.

For more info on the auction, visit RM Auction’s website 

The Annual Father’s Day Rodeo Drive man-hood show in Beverly Hills brought out some rare, exotic, and hard-to-price models. How would you value some of these for Estate Planning purposes?

I took some good shots, but these are far superior to mine.

When purchasing an old guitar you must be very careful, There are a lot of FORGERIES.

There are many types of forgery guitars on the market. Some of them are done on purpose and many of them are done innocently & unsuspectingly by their owners.

About 11 years ago a good friend of mine decided to sell his early Les Paul. This guitar was a very rare example of a Les Paul because of the color and the quilted top. He has owned this guitar for almost 20 years so both of us are certain that the guitar is authentic, however over the years he had made a number of changes to the guitar. He swapped out one of the original PAF pickups for a Dimarzio in the 70′s, He changed the nut to brass in the 70′s. He replaced several of the pots in the 80′s and in the 90′s he had to replace the bridge. Luckily he never did anything with the tuning pegs or it would have been a major problem, because holes would have been drilled.

He brings the guitar to me because now he wants to a PRS. He tells me he wants to get strong money. I told him that no one would pay what he wanted with all those changes. So he now wants to put the guitar back to original. (this happens all the time). When this guitar is all rebuilt no one not even me will be able to tell the difference. Anyone who is foolish enough to make a statement like “They can’t fool me” or “I can always tell” is living in a fools paradise.

I have been going to “Vintage” guitar shows for about 21 years. It seems to me that there are many more guitars available today to buy than there were 16 years ago. How can that be? I mean how is it possible for dealers to have 15 to 20 vintage Strats in 1999, when in 1991 there were only a few to be found. What’s up with that!!!

Ed Roman
Ed Roman Vintage Guitars
Las Vegas