Here are a few photos of two guitars a friend here at work brought in for me to see. These belong to a wealthy collector friend of his--same guy that owns that '94 R9 Historic Series LP I posted pics of a while back.

This time, he had a near-mint condition '76 Strat "Hardtail", and a "Yamano" Gibson R8 Historic LP with a gorgeous quilted lemon-drop top. Yamano was the Japanese importer for Gibson guitars for many years, and they had the reputation of selecting only the finest examples of wood tops in their Custom Shop imports. I wouldn't argue, based on this one. Just stunning!

The Strat looks quite white in these photos, apparently due to the camera flash. "In person", it has yellowed very considerably--you can get a sense of that from the edges of the guitar in the photos.

This guy apparently owns 42 "investment grade" guitars, and consider these two the "least" of his collection. He offered them to my buddy for $3K for the Strat and $3.5K for the LP, but that's way more than he wants to spend!

Here are the pics: