“It puts the Black Strat in the neighborhood of the most expensive Stradivarius violins ever sold”: I was there when records were broken at the biggest guitar auction in history – and witnessed a new dawn in the value of the instrument

David Gilmour performs at Madison Square Garden in New York City on April 12, 2016.

Last Thursday (March 12), I found myself in the ritzy confines of Christie’s auction house in Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. My assignment? To provide a play-by-play of what was likely to be the biggest guitar auction of all time, as the musical instrument and memorabilia collection of the late Indianapolis Colts owner and CEO Jim Irsay went under the hammer.

Though a record-breaking sale wasn’t a sure thing, any doubt on my end was erased on my arrival. The public rooms in the auction house had been subsumed by Irsay’s pop culture treasure trove. I’d read and reported on the collection many times before, but seeing the scale of it in person was incredible – room after room; multiple floors.