Vintage Harmony Guitars
Vintage Harmony guitars are quite popular and there have been many younger guitarists that have learned how to play guitars on these guitars through the year. Often these guitars were purchased at stores like JCPenny and Sears, and have been one of the more popular brands of guitars. Sure, they have not been any competition for Fender or Gibson guitars, but they have been popular on their own. As the baby boomers are growing older, many of them are pulling out these old guitars and today there is quite a market for these well loved vintage Harmony guitars.
It was back in 1892 when the Harmony company was first founded. Wilhelm Schultz was the one that founded this company; however, Sears Roebuck bought the company a few years later, in 1916. They wanted to get the corner on the ukulele market, since at that time not only was Harmony making nice guitars, but they also made ukuleles and banjos. Harmony was in business for some time, running from the origination of the company back in 1892 until the end of the company, which was in 1975.
Vintage Harmony guitars were at their peak in 1965. In fact, that year the company actually sold better than 350,000 guitars, all in one year. There were quite a few guitar companies that were bought out by Harmony. Some of the companies that they bought out included Sovereign, La Scala, Oscar Schmidt, and even Stella. All of these different guitars were at one time sold by Sears stores.
The company that produced vintage Harmony guitars was based from the city of Chicago. The sales of the company were incredible. In fact, the company actually made and then sold more than 10 million guitars, just between 1945-1978. Today the company is owned by a company that is private, out of Elk Grove, Illinois.
While vintage Harmony guitars were at one time considered to be cheap guitars, today they are actually worth quite a bit of money. There are many collectors out there that pay a lot for these guitars. They can be found on various auction sites on the web, which is one of the very best places to find these guitars. While there are many of these vintage Harmony guitars around, many collectors look for specific guitars and are willing to pay top dollar for them.