“A guitar stolen from the late John Lennon in the 1960s sold for $2.41 million on Saturday at an auction in Beverly Hills, California, and a Beatles drum head went for $2.1 million”, Reuters reports.
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The auction house said the guitar was one of only two of its type flown from America to England in 1962 for Lennon and George Harrison.
The day after Lennon and Harrison received their guitars, purchased in Liverpool for £161 each, they traveled to a London studio to record “P.S. I Love You” and “Love Me Do”, the auction house said. He suspected that it was the same guitar in his possession because of the similar markings.
The story began in 1962, when John Lennon and George Harrison of The Beatles got themselves a pair of matching Gibson J-160E guitars.
An expert was able match the guitar’s serial number, wood grain and markings to the one Lennon used in the early 1960s, Julien’s Auction said in a news release.
“It’s such an important part of Lennon’s career and Beatles history”, NBC News quoted auctioneer Darren Julien as saying. “I knew it would go over $1 million; I had no idea it would go over $2 million”. For comparison, Lennon’s “Paperback Writer” Gretsch guitar was sold for US$530,000 (AU$752,253) a year ago. The instrument had been signed by the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney.
The Gibson J-160E acoustic, which was lost for over 40 years, brought in $2.41 million, with half of the proceeds going towards the Spirit Foundation, a charitable organization set up by Lennon and Yoko Ono.
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Meanwhile, the drum head used by the band in its first US performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 was also a big draw, selling for more than $US2 million.
