To: Geoff Altman who wrote (442728 ) 8/26/2011 12:40:11 PM From: FJB Read Replies (2) | Respond to Make sure you never try to take it outside the country. It WILL be confiscated. Message 27596628 John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says "there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified." Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, "I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar." It's not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What's the bridge made of? If it's ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar's headstock bone, or could it be ivory? "Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it— <span style='color:blue'> that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever," </style> Prof. Thomas has written. "Oh, and you'll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information in your Lacey Act Import Declaration."
