Vintage Guitar & Bass Insurance Valuations

Want to have your vintage guitar or bass fully valued for insurance purposes?

If you're looking to insure a vintage guitar or bass and need a professional or formal guitar appraisal, please complete the form below We offer two types of vintage guitar insurance valuation services - Virtual (based on your photos/information) and Physical). Both are fully researched valuations and appraisals of your vintage guitar, bass or amplifier.

Services & Prices

  • Virtual Vintage Guitar & Bass Insurance Valuation -  £75
  • Full Physical Vintage Guitar & Bass Insurance Valuation - £150

Vintage Guitar & Bass Insurance Valuation Services Explained

At Andy Baxter Bass & Guitars Ltd, we carry over 15 years of industry experience and have seen pretty much every single possible state there could be to a vintage instrument. Andy has developed a system to determine the value of a vintage guitar. Pair this appraisal with an accurate market report/valuation and this gives you strong, evidenced documentation to pass to your insurance company.

Vintage Guitar Insurance Valuation: The Process

Determining the age of a vintage guitar or bass goes beyond just the serial number and at the same time, will uncover if all of the parts are genuine or have been replaced/repaired or refinished over time - all of which can have a huge influence over the true value of the instrument. Let’s take a look at how this is achieved and you can determine whether you want a virtual insurance valuation or a full, physical valuation.

Andy uses multiple information points in order to establish a year of manufacture. For example, on Fender guitars, he’ll start with the serial number and then dive deeper and review the neck stamp, neck pocket, cavities, pot dates and pickups. There are various other caveats and characters in Fender’s dating conventions and thus, there are a number of different ways to look for dates.

With many Gibsons you can’t take the neck off, so on a Solid Body Gibson like Les Pauls you can remove the pickups and take the back plate off to inspect the pots for dates. On Hollow Body Gibsons like the ES335, you can still pull out the pickups, but dating the pots is often tricky and requires a dentist's mirror or pulling the complete harness to view the date stamps.

During the inspection, we will photograph the components and any dates mentioned above and include them in your insurance valuation.

After the physical inspection, we set about finding comparable examples of the instrument currently available for sale. Most of our valuations have been based on instruments we currently have for sale or have previously sold. We keep a huge database of photographs and sale prices of many of our previously sold instruments. We also use a few selected retailers worldwide to gauge an accurate real-time market value.

Lastly, with all of this information to hand, we will use this to determine the replacement value of your vintage guitar or bass, in the case of a loss, theft, fire or damage.

If you would like an insurance valuation, then please get in touch using the form below.

Complete the form below and we'll get back to arrange your Insurance Valuation