David Bowie's handwritten lyrics for the pop classic Starman have sold at auction for five times their original estimate — to Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art (MONA).
The lyrics to the 1972 single sold for £203,500 ($339,000), but had been expected to go for about $66,000.
MONA owner David Walsh said the A4 page, which includes edits and spelling corrections by Bowie, would go on display in the museum's library.
"We got carried away and paid too much," he said.
"It'll make an appearance in the expanded library we are currently constructing, along with many other items we got carried away with and paid too much for."
Paul Fairweather from Omega Auctions said there had been "unprecedented interest" in the sale.
The lyrics had been lent to London's Victoria and Albert Museum for the David Bowie Is collection.
They had been owned by the same person since the 1980s.
In 2019, the first demo of Bowie singing Starman sold for £51,000 after gathering dust in a loft for nearly five decades.
Bowie can be heard telling his guitarist Mick Ronson, who died in 1993, that he had not finished singing the song when he tried to end the demo.
The singer, born David Jones, died aged 69 in New York in 2016.
ABC/AFP
