I’m a bit of a guitar freak and have been trying to play notes in the right order on the right strings for over 50 years.
So I was attracted to the news that a world record was broken yesterday at Christie’s in NYC when the famous “Black Strat” Fender Stratocaster guitar, previously owned by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, sold for an incredible $14.55m making it the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction.
It was sold as part of a guitar collection worth $1Bn previously owned by the former Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay who died last year. He had bought the Strat in 2019 for $4m and his whole collection was auctioned yesterday. Jerry Garcia’s guitar also went for $11.5m and Kurt Cobain’s guitar went for $6.9m - all part of the same collection.
Other sales included a 1964 Rickenbacker owned by John Lennon ($1.27m), a 1964 Gibson SG used by George Harrison ($2.27m), a one-off Vox made for the Beatles in 1966 ($600k), Eric Clapton’s “The Fool” Gibson SG ($3m), and a Martin 000-42 acoustic guitar used by Eric Clapton used on his MTV Unplugged album ($4.1m). There was even a Ringo Starr drum kit that went for >$2m!!!
