Gary... You are seeing asking prices. Very few of them sell for those asking prices if they sell at all.

You have to admit

if one of those that sell at that number

makes for a interesting discussion as to the future of prime kits

Gary aka (houndog)

Vintage Gretsch bop kits have been selling for high prices for years. Have you checked prices on old K Zildjian lately? Personally, I am all for a trend for high prices. I want to see vintage drum prices go waaaaay up. I doubt that is going to happen anytime soon, but maybe in the distant future when and if a new group of people become interested...

I think one of the things that keeps drum set prices from going through the roof is the fact that there are so many components to a complete kit. It's very rare to find a matched vintage drum set in great condition that's got the matching snare drum and all the right hardware...The more complete, the better...A guitar, by comparison, is already complete by itself. You have to have a BIG place to be a collector of vintage drum sets - especially ones from the 1970s when multi-tom, monster kits were the trend. That's why I think that small kits maintain a higher value in general, at the moment.

Granted, there are many multiples of guitars sold to the number of drum sets sold. I was heavily involved in the guitar business for over 30 years. I can tell you with certainty that very few used electric guitars dating from the year when they were first manufactured in the 1940s through the current year are 100% original. I'm not talking about original stock strings strings because strings get changed frequently. Vintage guitar shows are plentiful. Hundreds of people at each show consider themselves to be authorities on the correctness of "vintage" guitars offered for sale. There's an old joke about biblical scholars that says ask any three biblical scholars a question about the meaning of a piece of scripture, and get at least four opinions. That's the kind of chaos that ensues at gatherings of vintage guitar "authorities". You say that drum sets are complicated because of how many components are in a drum set. How many parts--especially the tiny widgets such as pick guard screws or type of wire used to attach certain electrical parts--do you think are debatable and arguable on each guitar? Acoustic guitars also have many individual components to haggle about their originality.

Yes there are many components for both, but once a guitar is put together, it doesn't have to be taken apart to be moved to the next gig, etc. A drum set does. A guitar doesn't have to be disassembled to be put into a case...etc.

I think that part of the very reason for guitars' high prices is because of the OCD nitpickers (pun intended) who count every little detail as points in favor of (or against) a given guitar in order to determine its desirability and value of that guitar within their game of collecting. Drummers seem to be much more utilitarian-minded and less specific when it comes to determining what makes a drum or drum set desirable and valuable...again, with the exception of vintage Gretsch bop kits and old K Zildjian cymbals.

Also, a guitar is (more often than not) a fixed configuration....6 strings tuned the standard way. Drum sets, on the other hand, are more often than not non-specific in their configuration and tuning. So it's harder to standardize and compare drums sets with each other in the same way it is to compare, say, solid body electric guitars like :es Pauls and Strats. A Ludwig Octa-Plus and a Slingerland Jet kit are two very different creatures that really can't be compared the way a Les Paul and a Strat CAN be compared.

Old car collectors are the same way...They nitpick and make up rules for their style of collecting game.Maybe nitpicking is stupid to some people, but I quite enjoy it.

You just made the case for the catalog retentives. That's their game. God love 'em. Let them catalog to their heart's desire. "I specialize in page 17 of the 1963 Ludwig catalog. My friend over here is a savant of page 42 of the 1958 Gretsch catalog--revised edition. Don't waste your time talking with that guy over there. He is a heretic. He likes to buy and sell drum configurations that are not pictured in any catalog and charge prices comparable to ours".

^I dunno...never met anyone like that. I personally do not care what anyone else uses for their collecting standards. i only care about what I like to look for. It's just that there are many others out there, like me, who use catalog references to try and form SOME kind of basis for what's-what in the drum-facet of musical instrument collecting, which doesn't really have any clear cut standards. All kinds of configurations of drums exist...unlike guitars (for the most part). The drum manufacturer's catalogs provide some kind of names to these widely-variable "faces" To me, that makes it fun to try and seek out something that the manufacturers, themselves came up with and not just some Joe Blow configuration that was "custom ordered". God love all those guys, though. Let them collect all the one-off custom designs they can find...because they are literally endless.