A friend of mine owns a music store and recently sold a Japanese stratocaster to a young kid who was wanting to learn to play.As a matter of course my friend set-up the instrument and pointed him towards a good tutor. Some weeks passed until the kid returned offering to sell back the guitar because he wasn't making progress.(no record deal). Having agreed a buy-back figure the youngster brought in the guitar but to my friend's horror had neglected to mention the fact that he had indulged in a spot of premature ageing and the guitar now looked as though it had spent the last two weeks tied to the back of a wagon! After a spell of name calling and a deal of arse-kicking a reduced figure was offered and accepted and the boy went on his way.(presumably in search of a drum kit). Oddly enough this sorry looking instrument, which had never been played, was now attracting the sort of attention you might expect if you put Stevie Ray Vaughan's battered old Strat in the shop window! My friend said he could have sold it six times over.It seems that the perception of this level of wear and tear is that it must have been in the hands of "real players". So it would seem that if your thinking of parting with an instrument forget giving it a last polish and instead take it outside and give it a good kicking round the yard. You will be giving the guitar the sort of kudos that no time served luthier can match! Yes O.K. I was young once and even now I look fondly at the bumps and scratches on my favourite beater, but those are genuine, earned and honest marks, collected in the time honoured fashion of fending off unwanted attention from over zealous bar-room music critics! The person who's going to buy an artificially aged guitar is surely not going to have the type of tenacity required to learn a musical instrument!