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Should I be looking for a woopin'??

Nope.

you sound like you've learned your lesson ;^)

All collecting guidebooks in all fields are suspect- almost always incomplete to some extent, often lacking important details and distinctions, and sometimes outright mistaken. I can't think of a single author of the fishing tackle collecting guides I've read who got it all complete and correct. There are people on this board who have written some of them, and I think without exception they'd freely admit that.

This is especially true in the case of price, which so volatile that the estimates in the guidebooks can be obsolete by the time they're published. Other times, the publication of a work- especially an authoritative one on a single maker- can lead to a jump in prices as a result of newfound recognition of quality and/or rarity by collectors. For this reason, a lot of guidebooks stay away from the topic of price entirely.

In my experience, the estimates given on this forum right here are the nearest to being accurate. They are not definitive. But in my experience, they're usually pretty close, especially here in the Appraisals folder. Just check through the back pages to get some idea of what people have said about various rods.

You'll note that sometimes we agree on price estimates- and sometimes we don't ;^)

The other indicator of price these days is eBay- but it's only a rough guideline- including cases of some auctions that are jaw-dropping bargains, others that are staggeringly overbid, and everything in between. If you learn the fine points of model and condition, and then follow eBay long enough- like a year or two- you'll get an idea of what the going rates are for rods. But even experts paying close attention don't know what the going rates are going to be, 6 months or a year down the line. You need to keep up, month by month, week by week. Which takes a lot of time, and some effort, to do properly.

I will note that thus far, I haven't seen the shaky economy result in a huge drop in the price of fishing tackle collectibles. In fact, the value of much of the stuff- the classics, like Leonard rods and Hardy Perfect reels- continues to appreciate, or at least remain stable.

The thing about the estimates on this forum is that, especially in the case of your more everyday collectible bamboo fly rods, the regulars here understand condition issues- and they're also often able to provide educated opinions on the value of a given rod as an actual fishing tool- what the action is like, what weight line it throws best, where it seems to stand out as far as all of the different fishing situations out there. It isn't like colecting old creels to put up on the mantle- most everybody here actually uses bamboo rods for at least some of their fishing. Sometimes, all of their fishing.