Collectors From Across Nation Bid for Rare Guitar; Brings $25,750

    Jim Farrell and his sons, Steve and Paul, have seen a lot of interesting things in the years they’ve served as the auctioneers for all types of auctions. But, when Steve Farrell of Farrell Auctioneers came across an old electric guitar while going through a farmhouse north of Clinton, MN, it caught his attention. 

    “It was just laying under the bed,” Farrell recalls. In nearly mint condition, the Fender guitar warranted doing some research. He sent photos of it to an acquaintance who is a collector of musical items. The immediate response was, “It’s worth a lot; don’t let anyone talk the family out of it.” 

    Farrell discovered that the Fender guitar was indeed rare, and could fetch between $10,000 and $20,000 at auction. “Every once in a while, we run into something odd like this,” Farrell said. He discovered that if the original amplifier had been available, the price likely would have gone up by another $10,000. 

    The guitar is a 1956 Fender Stratocaster in the color “sunburst.” Farrell added, “If it was just a little older, it’s value would have been closer to a million dollars.” 

    With a rare treasure on the sale listing for the Lester Hanson estate sale, Farrell started contacting known collectors and vintage guitar shops. By the day of the auction, July 27, there was a lot of local interest, plus there were more than a dozen collectors at the farm northwest of Clinton. They traveled from as far away as Chicago and Las Vegas, plus there were potential buyers in Nashville and Alabama who were on the telephone and ready to bid. 

    Farrell’s opened the bidding at $4,000, and when the gavel dropped, the Fender was on its way to Las Vegas with a man who lives and works there but has roots in the Whetstone Valley. At $25,750, the purchase price was far beyond the “upper teens” the Farrells had hoped it would bring. 

    Lester Hanson, the guitar’s original owner for all those decades, had purchased it to play when he and his older brothers, Earl and Willard, performed as the Hanson Brothers Band in local venues around the west-central Minnesota area in the 1950s. 

~Holli Seehafer