An archived tradition
The Classic American Guitar Show (CAGS) was a recurring vintage guitar event held in Lake Grove, Long Island, New York from the early 2000s through the early 2010s, originally promoted by 20th Century Guitar Magazine. This page exists to honor that history and to provide context for readers who arrive here from old links and references to the original event.
For nearly a decade, the Classic American Guitar Show brought together vintage dealers, custom-archtop luthiers, restoration specialists, and collectors at the Holiday Inn Express in Lake Grove. Held annually as a one-day event, CAGS was small enough to feel like a community gathering and large enough to draw serious buyers from the entire Northeast corridor. Dealers traveled from as far as Tennessee, Michigan, and Massachusetts to display vintage Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, Martin, and Rickenbacker instruments. The room was a working market — guitars came out of cases, got played through whatever amp was nearby, and changed hands across the same tables where they had been displayed.
The Jazz Bar
A signature feature of CAGS was the Jazz Bar — a corner of the venue with an open-jam ethos where invited guitarists performed informally throughout the day. Over the years the Jazz Bar hosted players including Jimmy Bruno, Howard Alden, Frank Vignola, and other working East Coast jazz guitarists. Anyone with a vintage archtop in hand was welcome to step in. The format was deliberately casual: no schedule, no set lists, no admission separate from the show ticket. The result was a steady soundtrack of authentic American jazz guitar played on the kind of instruments the show celebrated.
What the show represented
CAGS sat in a specific moment in the vintage market. In the early 2000s the internet had not yet absorbed the entire vintage trade — Reverb did not exist, eBay was still maturing as a high-value-instrument platform, and serious vintage buying still happened predominantly in person. Shows like CAGS were where dealers and collectors built relationships, learned to read instruments together, and traded the institutional knowledge that no online listing captures. The community that came together at the Holiday Inn Express each year was small but consistent, and the conversations that happened there shaped a lot of the present-day understanding of what makes a particular instrument valuable.
The end of the show
CAGS wound down as part of the broader transition of the vintage market online. The economics that had supported regional in-person shows shifted toward online marketplaces with national and international reach, and dedicated vintage events became harder to sustain. The show’s final edition was held in the early 2010s. The Holiday Inn Express still hosts events; the Long Island vintage community still meets, just not under the CAGS banner.
The community continues
If you arrived here looking for information about a current Classic American Guitar Show, the original event is no longer running under that name. The Long Island vintage guitar community remains active through local dealer events, the Wall Street Vintage Guitar Show, and informal collector gatherings. For online community, the Gear Page and Telecaster Discussion Page carry the same conversational spirit that defined CAGS in person.
For the underlying interest that brought you to this page — understanding, valuing, or restoring vintage Fender amplifiers — our complete Fender tube amp dating and identification guide is the right next step.