This instrument is one of the 59 highly sought after Martin 0-45 guitars and is in immaculate condition. It comes with its original Martin paperwork and case as can be seen in the photographs below. From Wikipaedia: 'In 1997, Martin launched its "Women in Music" series, which was followed in 1998 by the Joan Baez Signature guitar, a replica of the 0-45 Baez began her career with.'

Joan Baez started her career when she purchased an original old Martin 0-45 parlour guitar back in 1959 (which are no longer produced by the Martin Guitar Company) and continued to play it throughout her recording and performing career.

Martin Guitars decided to reissue that exact model of guitar in 1998 as a special edition, and they built only 59 of them to commemorate the year that Joan Baez bought hers. All 59 of those guitars sold out fast.

During the 1960s Joan took her original 0-45 into a Luthier for repair and the Luthier wrote under the sound board 'Too bad you are a communist'. When Martin took Joan's 0-45 in to take measurements (to build the 59 unit limited edition series) they saw the comment and decided to duplicate the inscription under the soundboard of all 59 instruments for both Joan Baez's and their own amusement. It has Joan's and Chris Martin's signatures inside, which can be seen through the soundhole.

The sound of this guitar is sweet and balanced and extraordinarily loud due to the deceptively large volume of the sound box. It is a finger picker's dream and also works very well with a flatpick and can hold its own when in the company of its larger Martin Dreadought brothers.

The Martin designation of '0' is the Martin model number and the '45' represents the materials and decoration of their guitars, 45 being the top style of any Martin model and represents Rosewood back and sides and abalone inlay around every edge of the instrument as can be seen in the photographs below.