Auction a Good Gig for Sheriff’s Department : Drugs: Ventura County department is $102,693.50 richer after vintage guitars seized from a dealer go up for bid.

The Japanese collector shouted “Eight thousand!” to the auctioneer and Brent Haesler knew it was time to quit bidding.

Haesler, an amateur guitarist from Palos Verdes, was prepared to spend up to $4,000 for a classic six-string but instead settled for a well-worn 1950 acoustic that was easily within budget at $300.

“I’ve never seen this many collectible guitars in one location,” said Haesler, 36, whose modest collection includes a 1957 Gibson Les Paul.

More than 150 dealers, collectors and musicians from Washington to Japan converged on an Upland auction yard Thursday night to bid on 87 vintage guitars seized last year from a Thousand Oaks drug dealer.

When the bidding concluded, United Auctions had taken in $112,850, and the anti-drug unit of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department was $102,693.50 richer, after deducting a 9% auctioneer’s fee.

The collection, which had sat in the storage room for more than a year, was officially appraised at $126,000 earlier this week by Mac Yasuda, a renowned Japanese guitar collector who bid the $8,000 for a prized 1962 Fender Stratocaster, the top price of the night.

Yasuda dropped $23,000 on 10 guitars, mostly inexpensive acoustic models that he said are better suited for twanging than displaying in the guitar museum he plans to open in Beverly Hills.

“If this auction was in Texas, I definitely would have been outbid on them,” Yasuda said.

Sheriff’s deputies seized the guitars, along with $76,155 in cash and a 1988 Camaro car, during a September, 1989, raid on the Potrero Road residence of William H. Budnik. They reportedly confiscated five pounds of hydroponically grown marijuana, hashish, cocaine and psilocybin mushrooms and then claimed the guitars, money and car as drug-sale profits.

Budnik argued that he paid legitimate money for the guitars, whose value he estimated at about $100,000. He dropped the claim after pleading guilty to possession of marijuana for sale and serving several months of a one-year sentence in the Ventura County Jail.

The auction was held under an outdoor canopy with a jazz band accompanying registered bidders who wanted to test the guitars’ sound quality. Haesler said some die-hard musicians put down the $500 required to bid with no intention of buying, merely for the chance to play some treasured instruments from noon to the start of bidding at 7 p.m.

Albert Sullivan, 57, of Thousand Oaks, satisfied a longtime desire when he walked away with a 1949 Gibson jazz guitar. Sullivan, who works in the electronics industry, said he has put off guitar studies for years because he lacked a finely crafted instrument.

“I have an affinity for Gibsons since I had one in college that I sold when money got tight,” Sullivan said. “This scratches a longtime itch.”

Yasuda’s $8,000 Stratocaster was valued at $10,000. Several of the most expensive guitars sold below their appraised values, while many guitars worth $200 to $300 netted twice the price.

“We had a lot of happy buyers who walked away with bargains,” said Bob Mohs, the auction company’s general manager. “There may be some purchases that people will be disappointed about once they come out from under the ether,” he added.

Mohs said he has auctioned off private guitar collections in the past but none as large or with the no-minimum bid and unrestricted ceiling stipulated by the county. The bidders also were among the most shrewd horse-traders Mohs said he had ever encountered.

“The people who came here knew exactly the value of each guitar, when it was made and who painted it,” Mohs said. “Some even knew who owned a guitar before the collector who had it seized from him.”

Sheriff’s Department officials suspected that Budnik might turn up to reclaim some of his most coveted pieces. Auction officials recorded no sales to him, but said his bidding might have been done by a friend.

Judy Thompson, the Sheriff Department’s property custodian, said the former owner could only have gone away heartbroken.

“He’s lost a lot,” Thompson said. “There are a lot of guitars here he could never replace.”

Said Doug Moran of United Auctions: “It would be tough for him to show up. Sort of like going to your girlfriend’s wedding or being the bellhop on her honeymoon.”