This Limited Edition harkens back to guitars found in 1930s mail catalogs by the likes of Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward and related department stores. Cowboys were cultural icons in those days and for decades to come. They appeared in movies and musical acts, replete with Stetson hats and ruffle adorned costumes, were extremely popular. During the Depression, they messaged better times in days yore (at least when you were white). As Richard Johnson relates in his blurb on this archived (2002) webpage on this model as part of the then Collings website, “... Gene Autry and Roy Rogers smiled down from many boy’s bedroom wall.” This popularity was reflected in guitars being built with stencils on the top depicting cowboy scenes. One of the most popular is replicated on this Cowboy Limited Edition, a guitar playing cowboy serenading the setting sun (or rising moon?) joined by baying wolfs. Of course, the popularity of the cowboy did not last forever. By the 1970s, these guitars became more art objects hanging from walls, in large part because they were cheaply built and didn’t play well. Clearly, Bill Collings held these guitars dear too and was compelled to do something special when, after a trip to California around 2000, Steve McCreary showed him an ukulele hand-painted by Robert Crumb disciple and Cheap Suit Serenader Robert Armstrong. But this was not the age of the Waterloo line of guitars yet in which the philosophy of these “cheap” guitars was continued, replicating many mail catalog models from the 1930s. Undoubtedly, he would have used that platform if given the same task today. However, this guitar is a high-quality Collings C10 under the covers, with a Sitka spruce top, having the Robert Armstrong designed stencil, ebony straight style bridge with drop-in bone saddle, and pre-war scalloped X-bracing, Honduran mahogany back and sides, the former with a walnut backstrip. The top, with the lightest of what now would be called a Western Shade sunburst under the high gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish, has the Robert Armstrong designed stencil, appropriate ivoroid with Cowboy Rope top binding, no pickguard, and an ivoroid with B/W purfling rosette. The high gloss polyester resin finished Honduran mahogany neck with a C-profile has a 14”-26” compound radius ebony fingerboard with Mother-of-Pearl (MOP) long dots, ebony headstock veneer with MOP logo, and 16:1 gear ratio Waverly nickel-plated tuning machines with butterbean buttons. The C10 is a confusing model, referred to as a parlor acoustic guitar on the Collings site. One might associate this with a diminutive guitar comparable to the modern day Parlor 1 T model. But the C10 model is definitively a mid-sized guitar with a 14¾” wide body, 4¼” body depth, 19¼” body length, and a 40” total length, almost identical to the dimensions of an OM with just a little deeper but narrower body. The “parlor” moniker merely relates to the tighter waist and smaller upper bout on the body to provide the “... precise, focussed response”. How many got built? There is some discussion about that. What is certain is that the initial run from 2000-2001 consisted of 14 Cowboys, including this one. The same number is quoted in the text under this demo of the Cowboy by Carl Miner, with the added remark another 10 were built later over time. But why not go to the horse’s mouth? Collings Customer Support informed me they shipped a total of 23 between 2000 and 2009.