There's something to be said about owning a valuable vintage guitar that has had significant modification - in this case sanding down and staining the finish. It halves the value, and while they still command high resale prices, it makes me much more sanguine about taking it out and playing it. Probably ill-advised, but that's what I do with 1960s gear. Of course even instruments I bought new in the 1990s might be considered somewhat vintage now, but I take them out all the time so go figure. I still think of them as the new instruments.