While My Guitar Gently Reaps

$50,000 per string? Money Central has a fascinating and funny article on rare guitar collecting:

[Super-collector Mac] Yasuda started singing and playing country music when he was a teenager in Kobe, Japan. When his hero Hank Snow performed there in 1967, Yasuda and his band-mates got to meet the singer backstage. "A Japanese company had just started making steel-string guitars, and we brought ours to show off. Hank was playing a beat up 1934 Martin D-28, so I asked him, 'Hey, Hank, you're such a rich and famous guy. Why won't you buy a brand new guitar like this?' He just kept laughing over that, and his band did too," he recalls.

Three years later, and somewhat more informed about the virtues of vintage guitars, Yasuda came to Michigan Tech on a scholarship. Sent to a conference in Nashville, he skipped out to prowl Music Row instead. At George Gruhn's guitar shop, he saw a beautiful old Gibson J-200 acoustic for $450, and he only had $25 to his name. It was a Scarlett-O'Hara-clutches-the-turnip moment for Yasuda. "I stood there looking at that guitar and swore, 'Someday I will own all the J-200s!'"

I don't know if any of you have read about Yasuda's collection. Just pics of tiny portions of his collection have been known to dehydrate viewers from excessive drooling.

The leopard's got to go.

Here's someone who looks like he was also bitten by the Les Paul-collecting bug: