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If Japan wasn't so fanatic about all things Ventures what price would we be able to buy these guitar for?

I'ld say they would go for $800-$1800 range maybe less. Lets face it they are a very specific aquired taste. One of the main reason Japan love them is the reason most guitar player didn't is the little necks if you have small hands the Mosrite guitar is perfect for you.

The Japanese interest in Mosrites has everything to do with the Ventures and nothing to do with the size of the necks. The belief that the Japanese will pay any price for a vintage Mosrite is also apocryphal, rooted in a combination of baby boom nostalgia and Japan's bubble economy of the late '80s. It should also be noted that without Japan's patronage, there probably wouldn't have been any Mosrites produced post 1974. In fact, I would say today's global market values are still affected by the misconception of an inflated Japanese market, and not fact.

I think the small hands argument is bunk. There are plenty of players with big hands who really like these guitars, myself among their number.

I imagine that Adam, as someone who understands kanji and has lived in Japan, has a better idea of the Japanese market. However, I don't think the price issue has to do with Japanese collectors as much as collectors in general. Plenty of guitars from the 1960s have increased in value simply because they're old. There's not much reason a mid 60's Harmony should be worth as much as they go for. You can't pin that on Japanese collectors.

As for Mosrites, there were only 5000 or so Ventures models built in the 60s, so it doesn't take a lot of people to keep the prices up. Especially since Mosrites of all vintages are scarce to begin with. Up until Front Porch started carrying the Fillmores, you had to be lucky with eBay to find a modern Mosrite for less than $1500, new or used. I was pretty stoked when I scored my first Mosrite, a 2000-vintage Excellent, for $1200 in 2007. Deals on vintage Mosrites are out there, but you pretty much are looking at someone who is insisting on a local sale. Otherwise, I don't think that you'll find many vintage Mosrites much under $2000, Japanese market or not.

dorkrockrecords wrote:The Japanese interest in Mosrites has everything to do with the Ventures and nothing to do with the size of the necks. The belief that the Japanese will pay any price for a vintage Mosrite is also apocryphal, rooted in a combination of baby boom nostalgia and Japan's bubble economy of the late '80s. It should also be noted that without Japan's patronage, there probably wouldn't have been any Mosrites produced post 1974. In fact, I would say today's global market values are still affected by the misconception of an inflated Japanese market, and not fact.

I have to agree about Japanese interest in the Ventures, in the sense that their national obsession seems to be with the Ventures themselves, particularly in the matter of Ventures' remarkable knack of reducing a melody to its leanest possible minimum and then expanding from there.
This logical, minimalist, extremely pragmatic approach to a melody line is very appealing to me personally as well today, although I didn't "get it " as a teenager in the sixties.
Perhaps in the sixties the Japanese afficionados developed a fixation for Mosrites in the same way that we poor, sorry yanks yearned for the opposite mystique of the Byzantine, pseudo-oriental improvisations of Clapton, Beck ,Bloomfield, and Jimmy Page, by turning every stone for the rare (but today commonplace) sunburst Les Paul that they played during the same period.
Just as our horde of Les Paul-hungry kids gave Kalamazoo a kick in the pants, the Japanese Mosrite fans saved Semie at the point of extinction and allowed him to prolong the evolution of the Mosrite.
If the Japanese dealers hadn't kept Mosrite afloat, there could never have been the Mosrite 88 and beyond series to give us a clue as to what he had in mind for the future. It's not my place to say for sure, but it looks from photos as though he was on the verge of evolving an even more amoeba-like chambered-body take on the Ventures design, this based on comments he makes during the well-known Jonas Ridge documentary footage.
As far as our Japanese brothers being willing to pay anything for a Mosrite, what would an American be willing to pay for:

a mint-condtition 1952 Esquire?
Or a exc 1959 Flametop?
Or a vgc Gretsch Roundup?
any-condition White Penguin?
Or last of all, for a 1964 Ventures Mk I?
Out of all of these, which one is the best guitar for your money?
I know which one I would pick, and I'm not even from Japan!
watcha think?
twango

It also has to do with the fact that The Ventures had no lyrics so the communication gap wasn't there...and the tunes were very western culture....just my take on it.