Our understanding of time travel comes from the most informed sources, movies. Before Avengers: Endgame changed how we look at it, most of us based our knowledge of time travel on Terminator or even 1960’s The Time Machine. However, none of them are as important to our understanding of the process as the Back to the Future trilogy. We all remember when Mary McFly stunned the crowd at his parents’ high school dance with his rendition of Johnny B. Goode and an epic guitar solo at the end of it. While the original guitar was a classic that has been lost to time, you could own a replica of it that’s signed by the cast of the movie. It’s currently going for $1,350 at Heritage Auctions.
The wooden replica is based on the 1958 Gibson ES-345 electric guitar that Marty used in the movie, and has been signed by Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Claudia Wells, Thomas F. Wilson, James Tolkan, Donald Fullilove, and Harry Waters Jr. While it’s not really the version that was used in the movie, it’s the next best thing, especially since nobody really knows where original has disappeared to. The most famous prop from the trilogy are arguably the pink Hoverboard and the Grays Sports Almanac from Back to the Future Part II, but the guitar was instrumental in one of the first movie’s most iconic scenes. If it wasn’t for Marty’s quick thinking and the guitar, his parents may have never got together, and he would have been erased from existence.
The autographs on the guitar not only include that of the main characters, Marty and Doc Brown, but also the entire support cast, featuring the McFlys, Principal Strickland, and even Biff Tanen. It may not end up sounding like the original, but it sure does look like it. And, unless you’re going to finally solve the mystery of the lost guitar, this is the closest thing you’ll get to it. The missing Gibson ES-345 is one of the most famous movie production mysteries in Hollywood. The rare guitar was reportedly rented for production from Norman’s Rare Guitars, but couldn’t be tracked down after filming wrapped. It seems it changed hands a number of times, and whoever ended up with it may not even know what they have in possession.
The lost guitar has become such a big mystery, that instrument manufacturer Gibson recently launched a global search campaign for it, dubbed Lost to the Future. They set up tip lines and even made a short documentary on the hunt for it, but iconic guitar remains elusive to this day. It looks like we’ll never really know what happened to the original guitar, and it will remain lost to time for all intents and purposes. But this cast signed replica is arguable the next best thing, and is a must have for die-hard fans of the best time-travel movie series of all time.
What do you think happened to the original guitar from Back to the Future? Let us know in the comments.
