I hope I did this right and the images come through. My business banker retired and was moving out of state. When cleaning out behind his furnace, he found these 2 old banjo’s his grandfather left behind. Check them out, 4 strings, weird. I gave him $100 each, I don’t think they are worth much but are cool to look at.
I hope you enjoy looking at them.
Have a great week everyone!
Those could be (and likely are) worth decent money. One looks like a 20’s Gibson “trap door” tenor banjo and the other probably a Vega from the same era. Post some pictures over on banjo hangout.
Anything that says “The Gibson” on it, provided that it’s authentic, is likely worth way more than you paid for it. Nice find!
Beautiful banjos, A lot of skilled work went into installing those inlays. As others have said I am sure they are more valuable than you paid out even if they are not authentic Gibson’s. Love to get a closer look and hear them played.
Man, wish you were close. I don’t know how to play a 4 string and I would bet the strings are shot. Can this 4 string be played like a mandolin? I’ve been taking mando. lessons for 10 months.
That’s the kinda deal we all dream for.
Yes you can play a Tenor Banjo like a mandolin - It needs to be tuned like a mandolin GDEA this would also be the tuning for Celtic/Irish Tenor. CGDA is commonly used for Jazz.
Like Archie said, it’s tuned in 5ths, so anything you learn in mando can be applied to your banjos. If you just want to chord, think Dixieland band.
Thanks for the help with the tuning to the Mandolin. I’m on it!!
Super cool banjos!
@Archie was right on when he said you can convert your mando material directly to tenor banjo. Just gotta make sure you’ve got it strung with a set of Irish tenor (GDAE) strings. I’m not sure if it’d still work out with a set of standard tenor banjo (CGDA) strings if you tried to tune em to GDAE tuning. Fiddle tunes and Celtic material is what I’ve messed around with. If you go back in time in the forum posts to the banjo category, March of last year, 2020, I posted a few short clips of me picking our (pretty old, likely same time frame as yours) tenor banjo around St. Patrick’s Day using songs I already pick on mando. Post is titled “Old Tenor & Irish Tunes.”
Looking fwd to you posting a picking video 
!
Thanks so much, I will go back through the history!
Wow, what a find. They’re just beautiful to look at. Thanks for sharing that. “The story” behind an instrument is often worth the price alone. Just beautiful.
That is like finding a barn stored 1967 Camaro Z/28 only driven on Sunday mornings by a little old lady from Pasadena. A hundred bucks each? I’d like to have you as my real estate agent. If you are going to keep those, I’d consult my insurance agent and document their worth. Most homeowner policies have limits when insuring valuable instruments for theft or fire loss.
This is the closest example of the other banjo I could find listed, not quite the same, but pretty close.
No kidding??? I thought they were, maybe worth $100 each if I were lucky. Now I’m wondering what they are really worth. I do like your analogy regarding the 1967 camera, I think I would use that a lot more…lol.
Thanks so much for taking the time to look these up for me. I think they are original and haven’t been restored, looks like they have been sitting in the case for years and years.
I appreciate your time
You could have someone make 5 string necks for them.
$100 each?!? Hahahaha 
You gotta be jokin…
Hey Ben,
the next camp I attend, I can bring these banjo’s with me for others to check out. If I shipped these to the boys at the store, could they changes the strings and go through them? Is that something the store can help with?
I still can’t believe you got those for $100, I’ll give you $300 for either:joy:.
What’s embarrassing is I didn’t know they were even worth $100