Tokai ST-55
guitar
Has sold for €790 over 2017–2025, across 16 used sales. Too few in the last two years for a typical price today.
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Not enough sold data for a typical price. 1 for sale, from €1,130.
About the Tokai ST-55
The ST-55 is the ST-50 with the 5,000-yen extra, a natural finish in 1978-81, or from January 1982 a special colour (sonic blue, candy apple red, gold metallic, Lake Placid or light blue, metallic green), sometimes with a matching headstock. The guitar underneath is the 50 grade: U-stamped Type-B machine-wound pickups reading about 6.2k with a B-stamped pickguard, a soldering plate, vintage-style tuners, an alder body (sen ash on many late-1970s guitars), a U neck, and a polyester gloss or, for the custom colours, brushed polyurethane under a sprayed top coat. It came as a 64 with a veneer rosewood board or a 54 in maple, and by 1987 ST55 meant the maple-necked ST50. Owners date theirs from 1979 to 1987. Guitars built in late 1981 and 1982 were held at customs during the Fender dispute, 205 were seized, sent back, re-decalled with the black block logo and sold in the UK from January 1983, which is why nearly all block-logo Tokais are British; the block logo ran from mid-1982 to late 1983, and the guitar under it is the same as the Springy Sound before and the Goldstar after. L-prefix serials began in 1982 on the rosewood-board guitars.
Dating: the three-digit code on the selector switch gives year and month and runs a month or so ahead of the build; the month-and-batch stamps on the neck heel and in the body should match; an oval 55 sticker sometimes survives on the back of the neck; an L serial means a rosewood board; sonic blue yellows towards green with age; and the pots should be kept tight, because the grounding runs through the brass plate.
For sale right now
The best-priced as cards, a row of them; every other ad as a line, by ask. Each ask is the seller’s own number; the platform’s mark opens the listing. Each one says when we last confirmed it at its source: the price and availability are from that visit, so check the marketplace before you go.
eBay GermanyPrice history
Every recorded sale, one point each: 16 of them, placed by the day the ad went up. Too few sales to draw a trend through them without inventing one, so the points speak for themselves. Condition is mixed, so some of the spread is a mint against a fair rather than the market moving.
Recent sales by listing date
| Listed | Price | Condition | From | Platform | The listing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Apr 2025 | €1,034$1,199 as sold | very good |  United States | Reverb | Details |
| 9 May 2024 | €689$799 as sold | very good | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 15 Nov 2023 | €603$699 as sold | good | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 21 Sept 2023 | €1,552$1,743 as sold | excellent |  Japan | Reverb | Details |
| 12 Jun 2023 | €1,190$1,380 as sold | mint | United States | Reverb | Details |
A date is the day the ad went up. Marketplaces do not publish the day a sale closed; each of these had sold by the time we recorded it, in September 2026 and October 2026. A price is what the listing last asked, converted at that day’s rate.
Show all 16 recorded sales
| Listed | Price | Condition | From | Platform | The listing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Jun 2023 | €757$850 as sold | very good | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 23 Feb 2023 | €755$875 as sold | excellent | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 27 Dec 2022 | €1,294$1,500 as sold | excellent | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 30 Sept 2022 | €750$869 as sold | very good | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 15 Mar 2021 | €1,092$1,265 as sold | excellent |  United Kingdom | Reverb | Details |
| 11 Jun 2020 | €1,285$1,490 as sold | excellent | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 23 Apr 2019 | €845$979 as sold | excellent | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 21 Oct 2018 | €669$775 as sold | very good | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 30 Mar 2018 | €819$949 as sold | very good | United States | Reverb | Details |
| 28 Mar 2018 | €733$850 as sold | good |   Portugal | Reverb | Details |
| 29 Mar 2017 | €302$350 as sold | good | United States | Reverb | Details |
A date is the day the ad went up. Marketplaces do not publish the day a sale closed; each of these had sold by the time we recorded it, in September 2026 and October 2026. A price is what the listing last asked, converted at that day’s rate.
Cheapest live: Japan €1,130 · before shipping
16 recorded sales of the Tokai ST-55 from 2017–2025, all-time around €790. Too few in the last two years to quote a typical used price. Cheapest live €1,130 before shipping. Figures computed 18 October 2026.
What owners have said elsewhere
Paraphrased from 21 discussion threads among 24 owners, 2021-2026. No names, nothing quoted.
Owners of the 1981-83 ST-55 put it against the best Fenders they have played: the best Strat one has played, high-end Fenders included; better than any Strat another has tried; amazing to a player who has owned pre-CBS Fenders; playing like margarine with a fatter V neck for a third, though one 1982 is the heaviest of its owner's Tokai Strats and gets less play than the lighter 1984 Goldstars. The U pickups are liked at neck and middle, the bridge less so, one owner fitted a steel baseplate for more output and low mids and would consider a Seymour Duncan SSL-5 as in a 1987 Goldstar; another advises an E-stamped pickup in the neck for position four; a third keeps them original because the neck sounds good as it is.