The Gibson Comes Home

Sent my Gibson Poinsettia to Jake Wildwood for a repair evaluation two or three weeks back. There were some previously repaired top cracks (now cleated properly), a cracked and loose brace (fully repaired) and some nasty frets overhanging the fingerboard (leveled and dressed). Jake was great to deal with and was more than tickled over the opportunity to work on this old piece. The uke is shipping back to me today for an arrival tomorrow and Jake posted a little photo a blurb on his site about it................

http://antebelluminstruments.blogspot.com/

It'll be nice to have the little monster back in the quiver!

Looks and sounds beautiful!!! Glad it is on the way home.

buc master, how would you even insure something like that to ship!

Sweet!

Wow, wow, wow. What a treasure!

That's beautiful! I wonder how many of those are still out there.

Amazing! Congratulations again! Definitely an ultimate uke for your collection! It was nice looking at the pictures in the link and the sound file.

I saw that blog post of his earlier today and was drooling over the pictures. Congratulations on an amazing instrument.

Jake does great work, both on the instruments and the blog. I want to buy every instrument he puts up for sale!

Wow! That sound is just awesome!! Very nice.

nice nice nice

Yep, she's a little beauty! Eagerly awaiting the UPS truck tomorrow at the office. As for insuring the shipment........ Many of you may have had experience with UPS and claims: they never pay, it's always a faulty packing job! I insured it for $1K on the trip to Vermont and told Jake to do the same for the return trip. UPS would never pay a claim for it's full market value anyway so why pay for the extra insurance? Didn't make much sense to me so I let it roll for a grand.

I am told there are only two of these Poinsettias known to exist with the painted flowers on the board. I cannot verify that as fact but I have never seen a photo of any other with the floral board. I've run across about three different sets of photos of this specific uke, identifiable by a very small stroke of gold paint just below the headstock on the back of the neck. It's under the finish so I have to think is was a stray stroke made when the flowers were being painted on. Also the repaired cracks on the top are pretty unique and ID it as well. I bought it last year from a guy in Rhode Island but with the photo sets I've found it has apparently been passed around a bit prior. It's mine now!

Fascinating, buc!

Question: there's one on eBay now and for a long time, not as nice as yours, and looks different...I think he fretboard not to be as fancy as yours. Anyhow, do you know who selected pointsettias? Who is the artist, and were they all painted by the same person? The eBay one says The Gibson on the headstock, which is typical of the time; yours does not, but has a more scrolling logo (as Jake mentioned, too). Why were they so different? How many were made, do you think? What years? Just learning here, and figured you must know as an owner. Thanks.

God god almighty that is the f*$&%^# holy grail. Awesome!!!!!!!

Cool: yes, I have seen that one on eBay.....the one at $11K+? Yeah......big bucks! My research says the Poinsettia was a cataloged instrument in 1927 and 1928 and was available as a custom order (not cataloged) thereafter up until 1932-33. I understand that Gibson dropped "The" from headstock logos in 1929, and that was for all production instruments: guitars, mandos and ukes. That places mine somewhere late '29 to very early '30s as a special order piece. There's really not much information out there on these things. I have hunted high and low and not found much at all, attesting the the rarity of the Poinsettias. I've seen photos of maybe three others, none with a painted finger board. Others I've seen have ebony boards with inlays, some green sparkly things on the headstocks and all with different looking flowers (as would be expected, being hand-painted). As mentioned, I have been told there are only two known to exist with the painted board but I don't know that to be fact, and the same source claims there are no more than 10-12 known at all in any configuration. (Again, I don't know if these numbers are true.) All I know for sure is they are very, very rare and I am very happy to have landed this one at what was an apparently ridiculously low price, though at the time I thought it was pretty freakin' high! (....and no, I'm not going to give that up!)

When I received it last year it was suffering from dehydration bad. I bought an Oasis humidifier and buttoned it up in the case and after a week or so it was looking much better. It had some nasty fret ends along the board that were finger scratchers and, though I couldn't find it (Jake did!) a cracked brace. I finally got the nerve to bundle it up and ship it to Mr Wildwood for an evaluation. He was great, got it turned around pretty quickly and was more than reasonable in his pricing. I'm really looking froward to having it back tomorrow!

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, bucMc. So superb, that Gibby. I enjoy learning about it.

Gosh, I'm out of words.

Congrats! Wow, I haven't heard "creamy" used before to describe a uke's tone....now I have and fully understand what it means. What a treasure.