The screen flickered. A plain white page loaded. No ads. Just a single line of Courier font:

The guitar leaned against his knee—a worn, sunburst Gibson Les Paul that smelled like old wood and cigarette smoke. He’d found it that morning at a garage sale in a dusty corner of Bakersfield. The old woman selling it had said, “That was my brother’s. He came home from the war and never played the same. Ten dollars.”

Leo’s fingers trembled as he typed the eight digits into the free online lookup tool.

Leo knew Gibson serial numbers were tricky. In the 1970s, they used eight digits. The first two numbers often told the year. But free lookup databases were often incomplete, riddled with ads for overpriced strings and tonewood myths.

Ten dollars.