COREY HARRISON: Earlier, a guy brought
in a mandolin that looks like it's
made completely out of metal.
It's a new one to me.
So I called my buddy Jesse down to come take a look at it
and see what he thinks.
What is this?
Uh, well, it's obviously a mandolin,
and it's in pretty rough shape.
It looks like it's been rolled hard and put up wet.
JESSE: Yeah.
I work in a vintage guitar store here in Las
Vegas called Cowtown Guitars.
Every time the guys get any kind of weird instrument in,
they give me a call, and I try and help them out.
COREY HARRISON: So why did they make it out of metal?
They made them out of metal so they could put this cone inside
of here and make it louder than the acoustic instrument
so it could be heard over horns and all that stuff
in a big band.
It's probably one of the last metal-body resonators that
you see from the '40s because--
of the war effort, they stopped making them out of metal.
Before there were amplifiers, they
tried this resonator technology that they used in these
to make them loud enough.
It's pretty rad.
This one is probably a late '30s or early '40s.
They were actually a pretty popular instrument.
Had a pickguard on it.
It was probably tortoiseshell, and it's long gone.
It's really, really tarnished, but the cone is still intact.
And the little piece of wood here
called the biscuit, which makes it resonate off the cone--
that's all still there.
I mean, is this thing even worth anything?
Believe it or not, yeah, it is,
especially with the Hawaiian motif that's on this one.
It's a style--
I didn't even know there was any motif on it.
Yeah.
[laughs]
In this condition, this one, I would say, is worth about--
[music playing]
--about $1,000.
Wow, that's great.
COREY HARRISON: Are you sure, man?
This thing looks beat.
JESSE: Yeah, it's a vintage national.
That is the company to have.
Would it be worth having it restored?
Yeah, if it was in really good shape,
you'd probably pull close to 3 out of it, easy.
Wow.
Thanks for coming down.
JESSE: No problem.
Any time, guys.
It looked like it had been through a war
and left at the bottom of a swamp.
But because of what it is and it actually being complete
and still working, it's actually still worth some money.
You heard Jesse.
He said I'm going to have to put some work into it.
I'd like to offer you around $300 for it, man.
I mean, he did say it's worth $1,000.
He did say it's worth $1,000.
I'm going to put it on my shelf.
I'm going to ask $999 for it, and I'm
going to let someone beat me all the way down to $800.
Would you do $500?
You want to do $500?
[tense music]
Yeah, go ahead. Let's do it.
All right, man, let's go do some paperwork.
OK, very good.
Thank you.
COREY HARRISON: I still can't believe this thing's actually
worth a thousand bucks, but I guess
I'll just have to wait and see till it's actually restored.
[ding]
Oh, man, that looks awesome, dude.
Yeah, you can actually play it now.
This mandolin had to be restored.
When I got it, it was in pretty rough shape
and really rusted and tarnished.
It's impossible to sell a stringed instrument
when you can't play it.
Put a lot of work into it.
It's actually a really well-playing instrument.
It sounds really good.
COREY HARRISON: God, it doesn't even look like the same thing.
RICHARD BENJAMIN HARRISON: It's just beautiful.
COREY HARRISON: It came out pretty good.
RICHARD BENJAMIN HARRISON: It came out nice.
COREY HARRISON: So what did you do to it, man?
Well, we had to clean it up.
You remember it was really tarnished.
You could hardly even tell that it was chrome or shiny at all.
So we cleaned it, polished it.
We had to replace the pickguard.
We tracked down a real piece of Italian lucite,
which was really nice.
We had to put new tuning buttons on the original machines.
We had to clean the headstock up.
We had to clean the frets, restring it, obviously.
We got it all playing.
Yeah, it came out nice.
It's got the motif on the back, too.
JESSE: Yeah, you can actually see it now.
RICHARD BENJAMIN HARRISON: Yeah, you can see it now.
You couldn't see it before.
JESSE: Yeah.
You could tell that somebody had left strings on it
for a long time.
Biggest thing you can do is loosen the strings.
As the wood takes in moisture and lets out moisture,
the guitar moves.
And if the strings don't, it tends to break things, crack
things, and stuff like that.
Hey, Rick.
Come on here and look at this, son.
Jesse outdid hisself.
Oh, that is nice.
The key thing now is you can actually
play it, which makes it to where you can actually sell it.
- OK. - Yeah.
Can you play it?
Um, I can give it a whirl.
Give it a shot, Jesse.
[strums strings]
That's about all my mandolin playing you get.
Yeah.
RICHARD BENJAMIN HARRISON: All right.
The mandolin sounds good.
Now, put a price tag on it, and let's sell
it while we're still young.
I paid $500 for it.
What it cost me to get it fixed?
$150 to get it cleaned up and strung up and everything.
Cool, so I got $650 in it.
What do you think it's worth?
You can probably get 2, a little over 2, probably.
- $2,000? - Yeah.
- OK, sweet. - Yeah.
RICHARD BENJAMIN HARRISON: Thanks, Jesse.
- Here you go. - We really appreciate it.
Thanks a lot.
You have a good day.
Rick, you're not the only one that
makes money around this joint.
RICK HARRISON: Just most of it.
RICHARD BENJAMIN HARRISON: Oh, right, whatever.
RICK HARRISON: [laughs]