Cheapest electric guitars on eBay, live right now.

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How to buy a used electric guitar

The neck and frets tell you the most. Sight down the neck from the headstock: it should be almost straight (a tiny relief is normal, a visible bow or twist is a problem, though a straightforward truss-rod adjustment fixes minor bowing). Check the frets for deep wear grooves under the first few positions, since a refret is expensive. Press each string at several frets to listen for buzzing or dead notes.

Test the electronics. Plug in and work every pickup selector position, and turn all the volume and tone knobs fully: crackling or cut-outs usually mean dirty pots or a bad jack, which are cheap fixes but should be reflected in the price. Check the tuners hold pitch and the bridge and hardware are not heavily corroded.

Know what holds value. USA-made Fender and Gibson guitars hold value best; a Mexican-made (MIM) Fender is a great player for far less but sells for less too, so match what you pay to what it is. Budget a small amount for a professional setup, which transforms how a used guitar plays.

Value. Quality electric guitars barely depreciate once they are a few years old, so buying used is low risk, and a well-kept older instrument often plays better than a new one.

Common questions

Cheapest by model, at a glance

A daily snapshot of the lowest genuine eBay price for every model we track, and how good that price is right now versus its usual level, updated automatically. Prices last refreshed 12 October 2026. Tap a price to see that model's cheapest listings on eBay, or tap a model name for the full live list here.

These are second hand prices, listed by sellers as used or pre-owned, taken from live eBay US listings in US dollars. In collectible categories a sealed or unworn item is sometimes the cheapest genuine listing, and it is included. The same number works both ways: it is what a buyer pays today and the resale value a seller can realistically ask. Every model also carries a price history, the daily record kept since tracking began, which is the part to read before you buy or resell. On a day when a model has no listing that passes these filters, its row keeps the last price we recorded rather than inventing one, and drops off this table if that goes on for more than a few days.

Under each model is the actual listing that price came from, so you can see whether it is the thing you want or a bundle, a variant, or an accessory that happens to share the name.

Over the period we have tracked, this category is down 5.8%, while the used market as a whole is down 0.3%. See the Used Price Index, which is built from these prices and published as a free CSV.

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