Price watch (84) : Tribute prices

Folks, Gibson had the Tribute Les Pauls once upon a time. These were around late 2011 if memory serves me right, I bought one. They were initially under the Studio model. Moving on, they placed the Tribute under the Modern Series which had been discontinued after the new CEO, James Curleigh, took over.

Why am I bringing this up? Lately, I noticed a few Tribute listings with prices seemingly glorifying the Tribute tag. It's like Tribute here refers to a revered model in Gibson's glorious history worthy of an exorbitant price tag. With reference to the listing above - $2.5K for a Tribute? In 2017, there were two types of Tributes, the Ts & the HPs. The Ts were basically models based on traditional designs. The HPs (High Performance) are the counterparts manifesting modern attributes & the most loathed feature of it all - those robot tuners. This particular listing is interesting because firstly, it included a pic of an unrelated model featuring a pair of P90 pickups. 

Secondly, the tuners here are a set of Grovers. Seller did not disclose why this swap happened. Thirdly, that pick guard is not supposed to be there. Notice, there are no screws / mounting bracket on the pickguard - so whassup with this?

These are the other Tributes listed in the after-market. When they debuted back then, prices were in the $1.5K - $1.6K range. Yes, we respect some appreciation in price but paying $2K (or more) for one  - please re-think your choices. Oh, you shouldn't influence prices this way, it's strictly demand - supply. That's true but we should not fall victim to price flippers / scalpers, just because there's Gibson at the headstock. There's already a shop here doing just that.

Nothing against the Tribute models - I still own 2 of them. Good no frills Gibson but nothing boutique.