Their music is priceless. But what is their memorabilia worth? It depends on who’s buying, when, and what you consider to be Beatles objects in the first place.
The most expensive Beatles object ever sold has been John Lennon’s Gibson J-160E guitar (below). How it ended up at auction is quite a tale. Small-time American musician Tommy Pressley bought it — he assumed second-hand — at a music store in 1967. He sold it to a friend, John McCaw, for $175 two years later. Decades later, McCaw chanced upon a picture in a magazine, of George Harrison playing a similar guitar, with a serial number close to the one he now owned.
The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Some artefacts receive no love. A fibreglass wall segment from the show, with an autograph and caricature by each band member, went on auction with a reserve price of just over $1 million, but found no takers.
Courtesy Julien’s Auctions
McCaw started digging, looking at high-resolution photos and zooming into videos. John Lennon’s guitar turned out to have a fish-hook-shaped scratch much like the one on his Gibson. It turned out this was the guitar on which Lennon had composed She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand, All My Loving and more, before he lost it while on tour in the UK in 1963. It somehow reached America intact.
McCaw reached out to Yoko Ono, who authenticated his guitar and helped put it up for auction. It sold for $2.4 million in 2015, to an anonymous buyer. Ono and McCaw split the proceeds.
Courtesy Julien’s Auctions
Julien’s Auctions, the house that organised that sale, has helped other Beatles items set auction records too. It sold Ringo Starr’s Ludwig drum kit (above) for $2.2 million, and Starr’s own copy of the White Album for $790,000.
Courtesy Sotheby's
But is it a Beatles collectible if it’s not music-related? Of course it is. In 1984, Sotheby’s put John Lennon’s Rolls-Royce Phantom V (above), painted with psychedelic motifs and graphics, up for auction. The car, a symbol of the Lennon’s swinging party life in London, fetched $2.2 million. It is now in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not collection.
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In 2020, an auction of 250 items marking 50 years since the Beatles split set a record for highest price ever paid for a Beatles song sheet. Paul McCartney’s hastily scribbled lyrics to Hey Jude (above) fetched $910,000, nine times the estimated price. McCartney wrote the song in 1968 for Julian Lennon or Jules, then just five, to comfort him because he was upset that his parents, John and his first wife Cynthia, were getting a divorce.
Courtesy Sotheby's
Beatles auctions are routinely held for charity. In 2015, Sotheby’s put up the Liverpool band’s 1962 contract (above), signed by the band members as well as the fathers of George and Paul (because they weren’t yet 18) and their savvy manager Brian Epstein. It fetched $569,000.
Autographs of all four members on a single object are rare. Those on a later album, once the band hit it big, are nearly impossible to find. In 2013, a signed LP of the 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band went up for auction, and was expected to fetch about $30,000. It sparked a bidding war and finally went for over $290,000.
Some collectibles receive no love. In 2014, a fibreglass wall segment from the Beatles’ 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance went up for auction. It featured an autograph and caricature by each band member and had a reserve price of just over $1 million. But there were no takers.
Other items are offered as a joke. When the Beatles catalogue was remastered and re-released in 2009, UK’s St Giles Street Gallery and the British Beatles Fan Club jointly hosted the Eleven Million Dollar Picture Show.
The exhibition featured rare photos and items from the height of the band’s fame. Only one item was for sale: a printer’s proof from Lennon’s own collection, featuring photographer Robert Whitaker’s infamous “butcher cover” for the 1966 album Yesterday And Today.
The image depicts the four Beatles, in white smocks, draped in broken dolls and pieces of raw meat. It was shot as a kind of protest against the band’s American record company, Capitol, which had made a habit of reordering and splitting the band’s albums in the US to make more money, essentially butchering them.
The cover was withdrawn almost immediately, and a tamer band photo pasted over the sleeve. The one on sale is especially cool. It comes with a note signed by Lennon that jokingly says, “Here’s the famous banned butcher cover. You can sell it for 11 million dollars”. The asking price was, of course, $11 million. There were no takers.
Rachel Lopez is a a writer and editor with the Hindustan Times. She has worked with the Times Group, Time Out and Vogue and has a special interest in city history, culture, etymology and internet and society.Read More
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