Ill-Gotten Guitars
The spotlight was on the Internal Revenue Service again Monday, but this time agents were loving it.
They had 49 electric guitars to show off--not just any old plunkers, but classics like a 1965 Fender Jaguar, a Gibson Les Paul Custom and a 1957 Fender Stratocaster.
Of course, they used to belong to someone else: an Ohio man who was buying them with income he neglected to tell the IRS about. He’s now in federal prison and his vintage collection will go on the auction block in Rancho Dominguez on Feb. 12.
The agency has been taking a political and public relations drubbing lately for the handling of some of its tax cases, but Monday’s event proved it has some public relations savvy after all.
There was Jeffrey “Skunk” Baxter, who has played with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, on the House of Blues stage in West Hollywood, strumming tunes and oohing and aahing over the mini-forest of instruments arrayed around him.
The glistening guitars were blond, black, red and turquoise. Some had ebony finger boards or all-gold hardware.
“Wow, it’s awesome,” said the ponytailed Baxter, who was asked to help promote the auction by a friend who works for the Treasury Department.
Seized in Ohio under a plea agreement with the tax-evading owner, the guitars were shipped to Los Angeles on the assumption that they will fetch better prices here. Their estimated values range from $500 to $25,000 each, said Kristina Messner, spokeswoman for the company handling the auction.
If that sounds a bit rich for your budget, the auction will have some other choice items: undrilled bowling balls, 270 pieces of Tupperware, boxes of Kenzo Jungle perfume, an automobile hood.
“It’s unbelievable the stuff we get,” Messner said.
Her firm auctions goods seized by various federal agencies, including Customs, the IRS and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, netting about $20 million annually for the government.
Among the items she remembered from other auctions: 40,000 pairs of bluejeans, mud from the Black Sea--”it’s used in cosmetics”--and London telephone booths.
