What the strangest place you've done a guitar or amp deal?

fretfinder

The pursuit of GAS nirvana means doing deals in some odd places sometimes - here's a few of my experiences: 

• Met a bloke in a park in Uxbridge to swap my beaten-up CE 22 for his Fender Cunetto '56 Relic. What a deal! Although sadly the Relic is long gone...
  
• Met a bloke at night in a hotel car park to trade guitars, inspecting each other's wares under dim outdoor lights.
  
• Swapped a trem PRS Custom for a hard-tail one at Fleet Services on the M3. Then a few weeks later sold the hard-tail to a bloke in a lay-by on the A303. We did arrange to meet there, it wasn't a chance encounter!
  
• Bought a Gibbo R7 in a Nationwide building society branch - the staff looked on suspiciously as I inspected the guitar from top to bottom and then handed the bloke a big wedge of cash which he counted meticulously.
  
• Drove 1.5hrs to Bristol to meet a bloke who'd come down by train from somewhere north of Edinburgh to buy my Murphy LP; he handed over the cash and then went straight back again on the next train!
  
• Drove 200 miles to Ipswich and back late on a Sunday evening (had to wait till the kids were in bed) to buy a Fender Concert combo.
  
• Two deals done in Clapham Junction station car park, one of the purchases was a Marshall 2061CX 2x12 cab which I had to lug back to Salisbury on the train, not recommended for your back.
• And a few encounters at different Starbucks, hotels, train stations...
  

And I've never met an idiot on my travels, always decent blokes. But that's enough about me, let's hear your weirdest deal moments!

 

koneguitarist

met a guy on the fleet services bridge for a Gold strat, another on M5 Exeter Services for a Gibson.

Train stations car parks , McDonalds car parks all over.

Pub carparks.

Lost count of all the deals done.

 

bertie

Runnymeade Hotel Car Park - sold Taylor 612

Chessington Car Park - bought a Fender CVRI

various pub car parks, since Ebay has been going

benvall

I met @Lew at the M25 cobham services and he bought my amp. He had driven from around Gloucester I believe.

stickyfiddle

Pease pottage services once or twice, Oxford railway stn, Aldgate tube meeting a certain @octatonic with a jooky pink thingy!

JookyChap

Tring. I didn't really think it existed, but it does. Weird.

Bogwhoppit

A music shop to buy some strings. 

DulcetJones

Been there, done the car park too.  Also,  a second hand shop in a little town called Tofino on the West coast of Vancouver Island, they only had one guitar, a very well made Goya copy of a Gibson 175 in excellent condition.  We were on a camping trip.  I bought it.

Travisthedog

Birchanger services with monquixote :P

TTony

stickyfiddle said:

Aldgate tube

I met Jules there when he bought my Gibbo DC faded.

Met someone else, whose name escapes me, at Victoria train station, where another Gibson changed hands, this one in my direction.

@Prudd at Liverpool St, where a rather tasty NSG became mine all mine.  And a call was made to First Direct to transfer some monies.

Sold my old Columbus bass to a guy at London Bridge station.

And I met a dodgy Frenchman @ddlooping in a pub outside Chelmsford station to pick up a one box PA jobbie.

There have been various other car-park / service-station based meetings.  More than I'd remembered until I started thinking about it!

None particularly "strange" though ...

Deadman

I met some dodgy bugger called rockmonster on an M4 services once.

Bucket

JookyChap said:

Tring. I didn't really think it existed, but it does. Weird.

It's not a million miles from where I live. Never been there, but I know it exists.

randomhandclaps

I sold a HH100 amp head through EBay to the most impossibly posh guy in the you could meet who said he would like to collect it in person..  He lived a fair bit away and arranged with me to be at my place for 4 o'clock.  4 o'clock came and went and no sign and I couldn't get in touch with him so just gave it up.  At 3.30am that night my phone rang beside my bed, my wife answered it and it was him to say he couldn't find my place so was parked in the car park of the local common half a mile away.  I had been drinking so walked up the road and across the common in the pitch black carrying the head.  He never got out of the car and after he gave me the money he asked me to put the head in his back seat and the moment that I shut the door he sped of without a word.  I just sat on the bench for 10 minutes on a freezing January morning thinking WTF just happened?!

Deijavoo

Met a guy from Norwich at Knutsford service station to buy a Dual Rec.

He brought his police badge (which I never actually seen) just in case anyone thought it was drugs. 

To be honest he really didn't seem like a copper. 

He also forgot the footswitch and I waited 2 months for it to arrive in the post. 

monquixote

Travisthedog said:

Birchanger services with monquixote :P

I made the poor bastard go to Harlow (apparently the shittest place to live in Britain)

I've driven to train stations in Welwyn and Royston, an Ikea in Nottingham, Norwich a couple of times, and the Cathorpe interchange a few times.

Only been pissed about once by a bloke who didn't appear at a train station I'd driven to and then when I phoned him to ask why he wasn't on the expected train said "Yeah, I bought something else"

randomhandclaps

Deijavoo said:

Met a guy from Norwich at Knutsford service station to buy a Dual Rec.

He brought his police badge (which I never actually seen) just in case anyone thought it was drugs. 

To be honest he really didn't seem like a copper. 

He also forgot the footswitch and I waited 2 months for it to arrive in the post. 

You can't really blame him for the footswitch, it was probably hard enough getting the amp out of the evidence room.

Jetfire

I did sell my old trace bass rig in one of the big airport car parks, no where to stop so had to stop by the petrol station there. Pretty scarey esp after you read all the "no stopping at risk of getting shot" etc

Deijavoo

randomhandclaps;67654" said:

You can't really blame him for the footswitch, it was probably hard enough getting the amp out of the evidence room.

Ha ha, he couldn't be a detective if it took him that long to "find" it too.

digitalscream

I swapped an Ibanez RGT42 for a Marshall Haze stack in Cambridge train station's car park.

I bought my Washburn N4 in the middle of what appeared to be Drug Dealer Central, in a particularly nasty part of East London.

Just round the corner from there, I bought a Laney VH100R from some dodgy-lookin' geezer under the arch of a railway bridge.

Handsome_Chris

Bristol City FC.

DrBob

Bought a Jeff Beck Strat from a British guy in the lobby of a hotel in the Disneyland Tokyo resort