Guitarist, publisher, and pilot Matanya Ophee (1932-2017) amassed one of the largest collections of 19th-century guitar music in the world. In May of 2021, Appalachian State University acquired the Ophee Collection through J & J Lubrano Music Antiquarians. Highlights include over five hundred first and early editions of major guitar composers including Fernando Sor, Mauro Giuliani, Matteo Carcassi, Ferdinando Carulli, and many others, as well as the only complete manuscript of the Dix Etudes by Giulio Regondi, discovered by Ophee in 1987. The collection also includes the personal scores and papers of Argentinian guitarist Doming Prat (1886–1944), as well as a large amount of rare music for the Russian 7-string guitar from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
