Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick has experienced a true holiday miracle, in the form of having his stolen guitars recovered, courtesy of the staff at Sam Ash in New York City; an unexpected turn of events which he is beyond grateful for.

Frankie Deleon Jr. has chronicled this for the Sam Ash Spotlight; an excerpt follows:

Late November 2016 - flagship Sam Ash NYC location on 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. A customer came in looking to sell a number of vintage guitars. Unfortunately for the customer, our associate Jeremy conducted a meticulous inspection of the instruments and asked all the important questions. When something didn’t sound right, Jeremy took a deeper look at the instruments. The customer was trying to sell a rare Heritage Signature Guitar. After some deliberation Jeremy, a big Alex Skolnick fan, realized he had seen these guitars before. He then went to Alex Skolnick’s website, and sure enough there was the exact guitar Jeremy was looking at.

With the customer gone, Jeremy got Sam Ash manager Ian Goldrich involved. Ian decided to contact the management for Alex Skolnick. Next thing he knew, a reply was waiting in his inbox from Skolnick himself.

“I recently changed storage units – these and more than a dozen other instruments were moved from one location to another. Indeed I might not have noticed for another year or so, as I’m on tour often and there are long gaps between my going through all the instruments I’m not using. Since there are several other cases that match these two, it’s an easy target.” Skolnick wrote.

It turns out that Alex had been present when a third party company was helping to transport his possessions to the new storage unit, and he thought something just was off during the experience. Once a police report was filed, the guilty seller was promptly arrested on site when he came back to sell even more stolen guitars. In the end, Alex got back four of his prized guitars.

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