Well as far as $5000 guitars (and up), here's my philosophy.
I had two Guild guitar sitting around that got zero play. One a DV73 that was so beautiful I was afraid to touch it. A great sounding guitar that never spoke deeply to me personally. I also had a JF30-12, which was an '89 and looked like new. But it was too much work and didn't fit my playing style. Those two guitars sat literally for years unplayed. At some point you ask yourself why?
So then I asked myself what I'd really like.......what would get some serious play time. Already owning a couple of Collings guitars, I knew well how incredible they are. Now that's not something that can be put into words really, it simply takes the personal experience of having played them. With that in mind, I set out to carefully evaluate and determine precisely what I wanted in an acoustic and that was really pretty easy to do after much study.
Now here again, keep in mind that the buying experience is totally different than say, Guild, to buying a Collings guitar. As with Guild, most people buy Collings guitars used, but in my case, after looking for quite a while, I was unable to find exactly what I had in mind. That left one option.....a custom order to Collings, and by the way, ALL Collings guitars are custom order. You may buy one from dealer stock, but that dealer as placed an order for that specific guitar.
So now on to the order itself. What do you get, and how does it work? You order through a dealer, and you order precisely what you want down to the detail. And within parameters, they'll build anything. So once your order is placed, the buyer is free to call Collings and discuss details and progress. It begins with one man, the same man for 29 years not only selecting and buying all woods, but hand selecting not only your top, but matching that particular top to say, a mahogany dread body. And that man knows better than just about anyone on earth, which sounds, what excitability mates with the various back and side woods. From there you are able to select bracing wood, style of bracing and have the ability to omit bracing, which I did indeed do. You select tuners, inlay and appointments, including finish, and you can even select neck profile. Collings not only offers a variety of finishes, but if you send them a picture of say a particular burst, they will try and duplicate it. Just an incredible guitar buying/building experience......and now, for the first time in my 65 years, this feels like "my guitar".
Bill Collings was a pretty straight shooter and friends with several other builder, including Chris Martin, Bob Taylor, Richard Hoover and others, and in an interview I watched with Bill before he died, he was very frank about what he was trying to accomplish, and one of the details he cited was that it took roughly 11 man hours to build a Martin guitar, but it took Collings around 60 man hours. Bill smiled and said that it wasn't a very good business model, was it? But that's why fine guitars cost what they cost. Worth every penny for sure.
Would it have been smarter to keep two guitars that got no play, or to sell them and buy one that I've been unable to put down and am absolutely addicted to? Not that I feel the need to justify my decision, I don't, not to anyone but myself. And I assure you that in my mind, that decision was more than justified. I see guys with collections of 50 guitar, and I ask myself why? But it's none of my business why they choose to own 50 guitars, they're grown and they own them because they can.
West
