Jeff Wells

Jeff Wells is founder and curator of the Austin-Marie Collection, a longtime investment professional based in San Anselmo, California, and a trained classical guitarist. He earned a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and has more than four decades of experience in fixed-income markets as a Senior Vice President and portfolio manager at Stifel. As a collector, he has spent roughly twenty years building one of the most significant private holdings of historical guitars from the early 17th through the end of the 19th century. The Austin-Marie Collection has been featured in museum exhibitions and scholarly publications, including twelve instruments in MIM’s Stradivarius and the Golden Age of Violins and Guitars. Jeff is currently developing a pricing index for European vintage guitars, directly supporting Gearcheck’s valuation and market-insight tools.