Minor imperfections and factory overstock guitars

Riaan

I've been following a guitar or two on EBay recently...just out of curiosity understand, I'm not gonna buy anything, I don't suffer from GAS.... ? There's a nice Gretsch, a nice Epiphone LP, a nice...

Anyway, one guy with very reasonable prices and not too bad S&H charges to SA (a shop called bsideguitars) says this about all their guitars:

"We get our guitars from a national supplier of unowned and unplayed instruments. Due to minor imperfections or factory overstock, they are stamped used or 2nd on the back of the headstock and ink stamped on the inside label. This stamp is to prevent unathorized warranty claims. This in no way affects the sound or playability of these fine instruments. As a matter of fact they are normally set up better this way as our distributor goes through each instrument before it leaves the factory."

Do you guys have any experience with guitars labelled as such? What kind of minor imperfections would these guitars have? Would you buy a guitar unseen with this description? The guitars are all well photographed and appear to be in mind condition.

Bob-Dubery

Riaan wrote
Do you guys have any experience with guitars labelled as such? What kind of minor imperfections would these guitars have? Would you buy a guitar unseen with this description? The guitars are all well photographed and appear to be in mind condition.

I'd be pretty leery of such offers unless I knew the guys well. This is because
a) Unless you know what you're looking for a no-name brand Korean Strat copy with the name blacked out could look a lot like a genuine Strat with the name blacked out.
b) I know that Gibson trash all the guitars that fail QC for whatever reason. This is to prevent somebody raiding their rubbish bins and selling sub-par guitars with the Gibson name and Gibson serial numbers that could do damage to Gibson's reputation.