hey how can i help you i have this guitar here and i wasn't sure whether or not i could
legally sell it yeah i've never had anyone ask me if it's legal to sell their guitar
and that would explain why it's a tortoise shell okay
i came to the pawn shop today to see if i could sell my turtle shell guitar as far as its value
i had no clue if i was able to sell it today that money will go towards my daughter's college
where in the world did you get this i bought it at a pawn shop and for some reason i was drawn to it
i've done a little bit of research on it the uk government has one that they confiscated through
customs so does the australian government and there's a very limited amount of memory
for centuries and centuries people use tortoise shell for everything i mean it was really prized
for a long time tortoiseshell was real popular back in the day for making combs
sunglasses guitar picks all sorts of stuff it looks cool and it's incredibly durable but some
tortoises became endangered so in the early 70s the trade and tortoise shell was banned
i mean it really is beautiful the way the light goes through it it's browns and reds and oranges
but my problem here at the moment is i don't know if it's early 70s or older which would determine
whether it's legal for me to buy this thing you have to think about it a bald eagle feather is
a ten thousand dollar fine it doesn't matter if you thought it was a turkey feather if it turns
out to be a bald eagle feather they're gonna take it from you they're gonna find you 10 000 bucks
and tell you ignorance is no excuse for the law so i've never been here today
i have a friend with a store right down the street so he might know the laws on it
that sounds good okay let me give him a call all right i've seen a lot of instruments come
through the store but never anything like this making a new guitar at a tortoise shell would be
against the law so if i can verify that this is old enough and legal to own then we're looking
at an extremely rare find here hey man how's it going pretty good how you doing all right
this is the guitar i called you about wow the sea turtle maybe cool very cool guys usually
calm me down when they have anything with strings on it i used to play in a bunch of different punk
rock bands when i was younger so it's kind of surprising i can even remember anything let alone
all the stuff i've learned about guitars over the years so do you know anything about these things
they were kind of big after world war ii korean war guys would bring them back from the pacific
and i know they go for a premium they go for a lot of money so you have any idea how these
sound you know i know that bluegrass guys prefer a real tortoiseshell pick because of
the sound the tone of the pick looks like it'd be a weird scale length the neck looks really short
but not having strings on it i kind of have no idea it could sound amazing okay you know so i
mean what are your concerns um basically is it legal owned and any idea what it's worth this is
kind of a tough one because i don't think you're getting any trouble owning it because there's a
lot of this stuff floating around it's been around for you know ever people been making stuff out of
tortoise but i don't know about selling it i would think one that was made really well you could
probably get some money for and somebody did a lot of work on the inland you can see the rosetta
pattern around the sound hole matches the binding and stuff but uh this is kind of a tough one
honestly dude i wouldn't touch this with a 10-foot pole there's people that have done 10 months of
in-house arrest and paid like 20 grand in fines for selling this stuff illegally that's what i
would be concerned with you know all right thanks man no problem catch you guys later hey thanks
good luck with it man hey thank you i'm going to look at my options
as to what i can and can't do with it i've got two girls and i don't want jail visits from them
you