Same goes for vinyl. I love techno music from the 90th. It seems that there is an abundance of vinyl that magically survived 20 years of niche existence.

Especially records from the legendary Harthouse label, seems to be ubiquitously available. Harthouse was famous for its limited edition policy and restricted selling of its records. They were very selective and that's how the famous "sound of Frankfurt" was born: access to Harthouse records was limited, and distribution took mainly place here in Frankfurt. It was tough back then to buy certain records even in the famous Delirium store.

Nowadays you simply place an order in the Internets...

You're just describing Discogs and a genre with little to no demand, now, in the present time.

It has been said you could build a nice house out of the fragments of the True Cross on display throughout the world.

One Charles de Fleury catalogued pieces of the true cross in the 1800s and found them to sum to 2% of a plausibly sized cross, not the oft-repeated claim that they add up to a large ship, or a nice house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross#Dispersal_of_relics paragraph 6. While perhaps biased, it does seem plausible that a cataloguing of such claimed relics today would add up to a similar total volume.

The famous John Calvin quote about relics comes from 1543, and many of the other quotes come from before 1000, while that catalogue is from the 1870.

In between comes the Protestant Reformation, more than a century of religious wars across all of Europe where one side in many cases actively sought to destroy relics and the gradual conversion to Islam of many densely populated Christian areas.

A catalogue from the 1870 is next to worthless for telling us how many relics existed in the early 1500s.

But everyone knows, that the number of relics increases over time. For each one lost, two new ones appear. So if we had 2% of the true cross in 1870, perhaps we had only 1% in 1543. Someone needs to update the catalogue. When we see how much we have today, we can estimate, when the cross crosses 100%. In the year 3451? (The Hobbes theory.)

> A catalogue from the 1870 is next to worthless for telling us how many relics existed in the early 1500s.

I thought we were talking about how many are on display? What does the number of fragments that existed in the 1500s matter?

The claim that you could build a house out of the fragments comes from the 1500s, so that's the number that matters if you're checking the veracity of that claim.

There are far less now that Protestants spent a century destroying purported fragments.

Since the fragments were said to come from a single piece of wood in Constantinople (see the article linked above), it is not that surprising that their sum would be reasonable. Clearer-cut and a little more entertaining are the thirty or more "holy nails:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Nail

That said, I'd like to know the carbon date on those wooden fragments.

I suspect the saying comes from a time more in the past when many many false relics would abound. Once the fervor around them died off, any ones deemed fake would disappear from circulation and the total amount would dwindle.

Well, the total amount would dwindle.

> “And don't succumb too much to the spell of these cases. I have seen many other fragments of the cross, in other churches. If all were genuine, our Lord's torment could not have been on a couple of planks nailed together, but on an entire forest.'

'Master!' I said, shocked.

'So it is, Adso. And there are ever richer treasuries. Some time ago, in the cathedral of Cologne, I saw the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve.'

'Really?' I exclaimed, amazed. Then, siezed by doubt, I added, 'But the Baptist was executed at a more advanced age!'

'The other skull must be in another treasury,' William said, with a grave face. I never understood when he was jesting.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

And the buddha would have to have been 10 feet tall for all the relics in the various stupas of the world to be real.

Frankly though, I consider authenticity overrated.

I wonder how much fragments would be worth at auction (i'm sure Paul Allen tried and was denied)

Christopher Buckley (of Thank You For Smoking fame) did a funny book recently called The Relic Hunter that satirizes this situation in a Middle Ages context.

I just watched a video a few days ago comparing a $200 guitar to a $200,000 (Hauser) guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPY9Mxg3OJQ

Long story short, go for the $700-$2k guitar unless you're an "art collector" that will never play it.

Then again, I doubt many people can tell the difference between a $200 guitar and a $700 one.

I'd say there's some wiggle room there - I own lots of guitars, the most expensive of which would retail for about $5k today (I paid maybe half that when I got it ~15 years ago).

Once you get past a certain price, you're paying more for different (e.g. custom build) rather than better.

I'm a weirdo in that I generally like modern (even ultramodern, I own a Strandberg) - guitars for playability - thinner necks, comfort contours, that sort of thing, but vintage for tone...so I have a couple I've commissioned that try to combine the best of both worlds.

Here are two of mine: https://i.imgur.com/pVQiOfC.jpeg

They both look like weird, but both have vintage roots...

The one on the left is heavily inspired by vintage Gibsons in the ways that mattger... neck and body are korina, the top (very not vintage) is flamed Hawaiian Koa.

The one on the right is basically my take on a Fender Strat... but headless (better weight distribution, and allows for the..) and with an excellent modern tremolo bridge.

It's not just about sound but also the way it feels in your hands when you play it. I had a ~$400 Squire Stratocaster as my main guitar that sounds great and is nearly indistinguishable from a Fender, but I had a hard time playing it for more than an hour at a time since it was hard on my hands (because of the quality of wood of the neck and fretboard, and I had trouble keeping the neck action where I want it).

Then I saved up and got an American Fender Jazzmaster that's a recreation of one of the 60s models (cost around $2k used), and I can easily play that for 3-4 hours at a time without straining my hands. Everything just feels nicer in your hands because of the wood quality and you play better since it's more ergonomical.

I agree that you probably can't hear the difference between a Squire and a Fender unless you are really familiar with how guitars and the pickup electronics work and have really good musical hearing, however I'd say in general the cutoff for a good sounding guitar (that's almost indistinguishable from something in the $750 to $2k range) is around $400. Anything less than that and the quality of materials and wiring will probably be bad enough to be noticeable, or things will wear out sooner rather than later (and poor ergonomics can keep you from playing at your full potential).

There are exceptions to that though, I have a cheapo Washburn fretless bass that plays and sounds great, and I think I got it used for around $100.

Then above the low 4 figures you're getting diminishing returns and/or just getting a collectible instead of something you intend to actually make music with.

Depreciation can be a real bitch, though.

My favorite story along those lines was when I got paid $300 to own an exotic bass for a decade.

The bass in question: An Alembic 6 string fretless. Original retail price in 1991: $6800 ($14.4k inflation adjusted).

My local small town music store took it in on trade...tagged it at around $2500 or so... it proceeded to sit on the wall for the next 3 or 4 years. Owner of the store was a quirky older dude who doesn't do internet sales at all.

So, finally, I catch the owner in a good mood one day and say look - I'm the only guy with weird enough tastes in this town to ever buy that...but I can't afford it at that price. I'll give $1000 in cash, today.

...and he took it.

That was, if memory serves, about 2003.

Had a bit of cash crunch when I was laid off for about 6 months circa 2012 or so, and put up a few of my instruments at a high end consignment shop (but in a big city, with an actual instrument market). Even aftger their cut I ended up with about $1,350.

I think anyone with passing experience playing can tell the difference between a $200 and $700 guitar even with a professional set up.

A $200 strat will never be in tune, the tuning pegs will all have weird amounts of varying resistance, the bridge might rattle, you probably need a fret leveling right out of the box unless you're ok with either a crazy high action or nasty fret buzz, and so on. Oh and it sounds pretty terrible relative to something with decent pups in a decent amp.

Personally the sweet spot of cheap guitars is more like $500 with inflation these days. The expensive stuff from China and cheap stuff from Korea is great. Those are giggable, serviceable guitars. In the $1k range for cheap American, expensive Korean, or Mexican or Japanese guitars you're paying for quality control. One model will play and sound like the others.

My first acoustic guitar (2007) was a Yamaha, FG800 I think. $200. Had absolutely no problems with it, but I gave it to my brother and then purchased a PRS SE Angelus A10E that was about $600. To be honest, there was no difference at all in quality or tone. I really only got it for the electric pickups & aesthetic (who doesn't love those bird inlays?!).

It is astounding how good of a guitar you can get for a few hundred dollars these days.

My Yamaha FG800 cost $200 and is probably 70-80% as good as my Martin that cost $1300.

There is even less of a difference between cheap and expensive electric guitars. Especially if you learn to do a good setup yourself and replace the pickups.

I would disagree, unless you're willing to rewire the whole thing.

Just about every cheap electric I've ever seen has shitty pots, bad or no shielding, maybe even bad grounding.

Hum sucks.

I have a Squier Strat I bought for $25 that sounds every bit as good as my 1959 Strat, although the latter feels better to play.

It's also crazy how disparate the values of older guitars are as well. I inherited a pristine 1975 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Blue Sparkle; one of 250 made. Despite its rarity, it's not a super high demand guitar, so it barely clears 4-5 figures.

I just found your Reddit post - that's a beauty

Back in the day my old man parted ways with a 60s Tele - he doesn't appreciate being reminded about it