A True Financial Instrument?
Gil Hembree was 20 years old and working the counter at Kitt's Music on G Street NW when he spotted a 1962 Gibson catalogue featuring the music-making duo of Les Paul and Mary Ford.</br></br>It wasn't the couple that caught his attention but rather the guitar slung over Paul's shoulder: an original-style, single-cutaway Gibson Les Paul model with a gold finish.</br></br>That was 1966. Soon after, Hembree saw an Evening Star classified ad for a 1952 Gibson Goldtop Les Paul. He paid $100 to a country-music fan in the Maryland suburbs. Hembree later sold it to a musician for $400, booking a profit he used to help cover tuition at American University, where he studied accounting.</br></br>"He had no idea, and I didn't really either at the time, what these were worth," Hembree said of the transaction. "I just thought they were cool."</br></br>Today a 1952 Goldtop in excellent condition is valued at $15,000 by Vintage Guitar magazine, which publishes an annual price guide.