How many playable Selmers remain?

Michael Bauer · January 2014

I have had several chats with Jacques Mazzoleni, and he has commented that pre-war guitars are relatively scarce, and suspects many may have been damaged by bombs and artillery fire, as well as carted off by soldiers, used, and discarded/lost during movements and fighting. Jacques figured that relatively few are still around, but that may only be true in France. I have read that the bulk of pre-war Selmers went to England, so maybe some will start popping up. There is supposedly a d-hole Selmer in pieces in Chicago, and I have made several attempts to reach the supposed owner via an intermediary, but so far, all inquiries have been deflected, rather indelicately, if I might add.

Scot, I owe you an e-mail. I am just back to semi-on-my-feet status, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

TonyRees · July 2020

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/68987#Comment_68987

Adding to this thread after a gap of some 6 years or so... since 2013 I have been attempting to maintain and expand the "surviving original Selmers" list on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selmer_guitar#Surviving_original_Selmers), it has grown a bit since then (also with contributions by some others, for which thanks). I used to keep such a list on odd pieces of paper for my own amusement, this is way better... Hopefully it will remain a useful resource for the future. Happy to receive any further info, corrections, etc., although (with a little knowledge of relevant style and guidelines) the intention is that others can edit the page with the additional information they have. Regards - Tony

pdg · July 2020

I used to own #670 -- bought it in the 80s for $3,500, got cold feet and soon after had a friend bring it to Japan, where it sold and I got $3,000 net. It's in Japan now.