What a joke. I’ve bought three guitars since I turned 70 a couple of months ago. Of course none of them were new. Got a Mexican Strat made in the ‘90’s for $150. A 2009 USA Les Paul for $550, and a Chinese Epiphone Les Paul Special for $80. All of them play great. The other two electrics I have are a 1996 Korean Fender Telecaster and a 1962 Gibson ES 355. The latter is worth a fair amount and would be right up Gruhn’s alley. The used electric guitar market is doing quite nicely. If I live long enough, there’s some new models out that I might consider at a fraction of their current MSRP in maybe ten years.
The articles on record album sales only care about "new" item sales too. 90+ years of records that can be played on contemporary equipment and few stores that ONLY sell new records (no used inventory).
424,865 sold 12" records via ebay in the past 30 days (out of 1.05million listed)
209,091 sold 7" records via ebay in the past 30 days (out of 524k listed) (US listings)
And 15,850 sold electric guitars (not including bass) in the last 30 days and 6,316 acoustic guitars)