Bon Jovi were touring overseas in 1985 when a 1976 Gibson Explorer disappeared from a warehouse. Richie Sambora spent the next four decades assuming it was gone. He was wrong — by one Parisian guitar dealer who noticed something was off about a guitar that had no business being on the market.
Matthieu Lucas, owner of Matt's Guitar Shop in Paris, bought the Explorer from a seller claiming it was Sambora's original. Vintage early Bon Jovi guitars never surface for sale — that alone should have raised flags — but Lucas wasn't there to flip it. He forwarded photos to Sambora and his longtime guitar tech Takumi. The response came back quickly: that's the one.
"What I learned then was that it was stolen," Lucas told Guitar World. "I immediately called Richie's team to give Richie his sword back." A few weeks later, Lucas flew to New Jersey with the Explorer in hand. Sambora opened the case, grabbed the neck, and said: "Oh yes, that's mine."
Why This Guitar Matters
It's not just a vintage Explorer. Sambora bought this guitar as a teenager and used it to write the majority of Bon Jovi's early hit songs. The guitar was present for the songwriting that built one of the biggest rock bands on the planet — before the arena tours, before the record deals locked in, before any of that. That's the kind of provenance that turns a guitar from a collectible into a document.
Lucas confirmed that when Sambora returns to the stage — currently delayed by a hand injury he described last year as "gruesome" — the Explorer will be the first guitar he plays live. Not a trophy piece. Not a display item. A working guitar getting its job back after four decades of waiting.
The Market That Makes This Possible
The story works because Lucas chose to do the right thing when he didn't have to. The vintage guitar market runs almost entirely on trust and provenance — there's no central registry, no mandatory background check on a 50-year-old instrument. A dealer with different priorities could have sat on that Explorer quietly.
It's worth noting that guitars at this end of the market — instruments tied to iconic recordings and iconic players — carry a kind of cultural weight that goes beyond the dollar figure. Jerry Garcia's Tiger sold for $12 million at Christie's earlier this month, a number that only makes sense if you factor in everything the guitar witnessed. Sambora's Explorer won't be auctioned. It's going back on tour, which is arguably the better ending.
And if this story makes you think about how much of rock history is physically embedded in old wood and old wire — Eastwood's recent recreation of Mike Bloomfield's Newport Telecaster is another version of that obsession, and worth reading alongside this one.