The older guitars that are in really good shape are worth good money, its the same as old gibsons the appreciate in value when they get older, if you buy a classic its somthing to hang on your wall not play!!! newer guitars have more tech. into the pickups and so on and so forth

It’s like with cars - some people pay lots of money for oldtimers, even if the newer cars outperform the old ones. But you pay to have a piece of history. But be careful about Strats. There are those made in Mexico, they cost about $300 - 600 (Deluxe Player’s Strat), and American Custom Shop ones, with prices upward of $1300. If I had to buy a Strat now (28+ years of playing just about every guitar there is), I’d go for Mexican Delkux player’s Strat, about 600 at musiciansfriend.com (buy online, save money). It has the pickups & hardware like its cutom shop brothers, but at 1/2 or even 1/4 of the price.
However, ever since I got my first Ibanez RG Prestige, I forgot about Fenders and Gibsons… those guitars have everything a Strat does, and then some. After all, Vai, Satriani, Gilbert, Metheny and George Benson probably know a thing or two about guitars.

P.S.
… and the possibility of making a mistake is HUGE - bmarcus above has Gibsons from the 70s, when both Gibson and Fender manufactured horrible guitars. But he paid them a lot!

welcome to the world of beautiful ladies called fenders :). lol if this is your first guitar you dont want anything vintage first of all its gonna cost you arm and a leg and second its something you put on the wall and not play. now as far as differnce goes its differnce of quality over time when you touch a 60’s strat your touching the era of 60s imagine that the body the paint job the knobs everything of 60s the other more notticable differnce is in late 60s the headstock shape was changed fender went from using the CBS headstock style (nice curvy fat looking) to a skinnier more elegant looking design, but these are just a couple of things if you ever have a few hours we can go over all the differnces in details over some stogies.