Washburn Neck Chipping

I have a 6 year old Washburn and the neck is pristine. Looks as if whoever owned it before simply did not care for it properly. It looks as if they just leaned it up against something they shouldn't have that had sharp edges time and time again. Someone should have told the guy you bought it from that stands prevent that. I don't think it's that serious. You could probably have a luthier fill in the chips and re-lacquer.

IMHO.

Thanks for the response! Yeah, I thought the previous owner had been wearing rings while playing it or something. But I got it home and realised that it was on both sides of the neck. The fact that it ran along the same part of the edge of the fretboard was what concerned me, although there's no other signs that the fretboard is coming away from the body.

If you look at the second picture it almost looks like the tang of the fret is pushing out through the binding and it's discoloured. I wonder if there was some sort of moisture damage to the fretboard? Maybe it was over-oiled?

I thought it might be from something making the paint turn loose, too. It's common to recommend "lemon oil" (lemon scented light mineral oil, more similar to "baby oil" than anything) as a fretboard treatment, and I've heard more than one misguided soul talk about using the oil actually extracted from lemon peels, which is a powerful solvent closely similar to turpentine. Could be someone made that error.