1950 Maccaferri Plastic Guitar Good, $595.00

We’ve seen these being offered around, but haven’t come across one in a while, and certainly not at this price. For those of you who don’t know who Mario Maccaferri was, he was huge in our industry. After designing the Selmer-Maccaferri guitars made in France in the 1930s-40s-50s and made famous by Django Reinhardt, Mario came to the US and got into the molded-plastics business, concentrating on plastic ukuleles endorsed by Arthur Godfrey, a hugely popular TV personality who played his uke on the air, and these guitars as well. I got to meet Mario when he was in his late 80s, in the 1980s, in the building that had been his factory here in The Bronx, NY, and he was quite the character. He regaled my good friend Michael Gurian and me with stories about WW II, about coming to America, about Django, about how his real fortune and been made by inventing and manufacturing the original plastic clothespins, and on and on. So here it is, a true original, in a state that is, well, maybe needing a little help. These things are a tinkerer’s dream; just about everything in it and on it comes apart, there are lots of screws and bolts, and it’s a fascinating piece of mechanical design and construction. The tuning gears are little stiff and the action is a bit high but hey, looks to me like the neck will un-bolt, and you can either play with it to your heart’s content or have your favorite local guitar tech do it for you. Offered as is, at the miraculous price of only $595.