Kinda hard to say, depending on how you look at it.

My first guitar, bought in 1952, cost me a massive $9.95, plus a fiberboard case for an additional $5.00. The store generously tossed in a free pick and a "Nick Manoloff patented chord wheel." Clever gadget. A sort of cardboard circular slide rule. Dial a key and it shows you what chords to play. Maybe six, eight months later, I sold the guitar for $5.00 and bought a Martin 00-18 steel string. I felt like a junior executive with his first BMW.

A few months after that, I started taking classic guitar lessons. The teacher knew Ed McCurdy (whom I had never heard of at the time), who'd stayed with him in Seattle for a few weeks—McCurdy played a Martin classic, so the teacher knew right off where I was coming from. He took my Martin 00-18 in trade for full retail price and sold me a Martin 00-28-G. Beautiful instrument! $175.00 (in the mid-Fifties).

At a Seattle Classic Guitar Society meeting (I attended regularly, they tolerated the occasional folkie, and seemed to enjoy it when I would sing a couple of songs or ballads at them), Bill James showed me the Flamenco guitar he had made for him on a recent trip to Madrid. I tried a couple of riffs on it and when berserk!

Knowing full well I could never afford one, I asked Bill what he had paid for it. Made to order by Arcangel Fernandez for the pesetas equivalent of $100.00. Then I really went berserk!! I may have invented GAS (if you don't know what it means, ask someone with a lot of guitars.).

A year later, it arrived from Madrid, air freight. Once played in for a couple of weeks, it had it ALL, and it just kept getting better and better. I subsequently learned that Carlos Montoya and several others had retired their Marcello Barbaro's and bought Fernandez's. Not surprising, since Fernandez had started out as one of Barbaro's apprentices.

I've owned a couple of other top rate classic guitars and one other Flamenco since, two nice travel guitars, and a Yamaha Guitalele—not to mention a Vega "Seeger Model" long-necked 5-string banjo.

I learned a couple of years ago that a guitar salon—a broker in top quality instruments—sold an Arcangel Fernandez Flamenco guitar which, according to the date on the label, was made a few weeks after he complete mine for—$18,000!!

I have a good classic that I play a lot (José Oribé), but I use the "Arcangel" a lot, too. Both guitars are a real pleasure to play.

Don Firth