Ok, so this may be just me but since I read about it a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about it and being annoyed about it pretty regularly.

Guitarist, John 5 likes Telcasters, and why wouldn’t he? He has a couple of, really quite nice, signature models with Fender and their lower-budget sibling, Squier. I like the guitars a lot and even quite like John 5 himself.

If you haven’t already seen (and you may well have as this isn’t spanking new news), John 5 is selling his signature guitars on eBay. With a twist…

And a wallop.

They’re broken, you see. Basically, John smashes one of his Teles onstage during a show, autographs it with the date of the smashing and bungs it on eBay. In and of itself, that’s not the most awful thing in the world. It’s not like he’s Hitler or anything.

However these are selling for around a grand. That’s $1000 or so for a guitar that you can buy (in one piece) for considerably less than $400 (it’s the Squier signature model he’s smashing, by the way). To the best I’ve been able to ascertain, the proceeds aren’t been donated to any charitable cause and are going to John himself who, I’m guessing, isn’t on the breadline (apologies if I’m wrong on this – happy to retract if otherwise but I’ve been unable to find anything to the contrary on John’s site).

That being the case, John 5 makes around $600 a show to whack a Squier off the stage and then scribble on it. Of course, this is assuming he pays market value (or anything at all) for the guitar in the first place. Not bad.

I’m quite happy with the idea of collectibles, celebrity memorabilia and whatnot but something about this doesn’t sit right with me.

Does this bother anyone else or am I just being a big old square on this one?