Pulling strings: using software and hard cash, a young entrepreneur plucks himself a tidy profit flipping vintage guitars on the Internet.

• Author: Bailey, David
• Position: FEATURE

Dustin Miller met his man in a cramped bathroom inside the El Paso, Texas, airport--two guys and a big guitar in one tiny stall. He didn't care what people in adjacent stalls thought as he oohed and ahhed while examining the man's 1957 Fender Stratocaster. This was business. Finally, his inspection complete, Miller fished $9,500 in crisp bills from his jeans' pocket and closed the deal. "1 went out one side of the bathroom. He went out the other."

The guitar had been listed for $15,000 on Craigslist only the day before, and Miller called the owner the minute he saw it. Estimating the instrument was worth as much as $25,000, Miller offered $8,500. "He says, 'How about 11?' I say, 'How about nine-five?' He says, 'No, I'm not going down below 11.' I say, 'All right, call me if you change your mind.'" Miller, determined not to let $1,500 spoil the deal, jumped in his car and headed to the bank. "I'm in line at the bank when the phone in my pocket rings, and he says, 'Yeah, let's do it for nine-five.' So I book a plane for El Paso." He later sold the vintage Strat for $17,500.

You could say the guitar has always led Miller down a unique path. Long before the Texas rendezvous, Miller would skip school to hang out at Don's Music City in his hometown of Burlington and "borrow" his mom's pickup--though he wasn't old enough to have a driver license--to hear local bar bands play until the wee hours of the morning. Miller describes his first vintage guitar purchase, back in high school, with the affection others reserve for first dates: "It was a 1978 Fender Precision Bass, canary yellow with a black pick guard and a maple neck. I realized I was holding a time machine in my hands. Where had it been? How many girlfriends had it helped to lose? How many bars had it played in?"

No, it didn't take long for Dustin Miller to find his passion. "At 14 or 15, I remember walking into this bar and seeing this stage and lights and soundboard and saying, 'Oh my gosh, this is awesome. This is what I want to do.'" After dropping out of high school to learn how to build and repair string instruments, Miller, now 25, realized his dream. He not only made a living repairing guitars and then selling them on the Internet, but he earned decent money--enough to buy 5 acres and a cabin in the woods near Chapel Hill.

Miller would have you believe he's an accidental entrepreneur--that his success comes from a series of uncanny coincidences beginning with his being born a lefty...