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.
To give you an idea of the breadth of his acquisitions over the years – from handwritten Dylan lyrics, to the original typewriter scroll manuscript of On The Road – the auctioning of all the lots took four days.
That evening, it was the cream of the crop of Irsay’s music and literature-related possessions – including what’s now confirmed beyond doubt to be the most valuable collection of guitars ever held by a private individual – that was going under the hammer.
Those in the room who were aware of the sale that was set to occur were buzzing. At one point, before seating for the event began, facing away from the closed doors to the auction room, I suddenly saw eyes light up and phones fly out of pockets.
Turning around, I saw white-gloved attendants carrying the stars of the show to the front of the auction room: Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang, Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar, and David Gilmour’s Black Strat.
I’m ever a cynic, but I was taken aback by the aura – as the youth would say – of the instruments; enough that my moment’s hesitation cost me the paparazzi shot I wanted to get of the scene.
Once the proceedings got underway, it was clear that the bidders felt the same way – the estimated value of the guitars kept getting cleared by wider and wider margins.
Two John Lennon-used guitars, a Rickenbacker and a Gretsch, from the Beatles’ early-mid period, sold for $1.27 million apiece, over the top end of their estimated value. The 1964 Gibson SG George Harrison used extensively with the Beatles from 1966-1968 sold for roughly twice its estimate at $2.27 million. Eric Clapton’s iconic “The Fool” SG, so emblematic of the psychedelic era, sold for roughly three times its predicted price at $3 million.
My task was to liveblog the proceedings, so I had little time to ruminate on what those prices meant. It felt like Monopoly money – random numbers I just had to peck into my article.
And then came the white whale: David Gilmour’s Black Strat. The one-time record holder for the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction – for $3.975 million in 2019, in the very same room I was in now – it was valued at between $2 and $4 million.
It cleared its previous sale price quickly as bidding started: not a huge surprise. And then the bidding just kept going. And going. And going. $6 million – there goes the previous record, shelled out for Kurt Cobain’s MTV Unplugged Martin D-18E in 2020. $8 million. $9 million. Even some of the auction house employees near me in the press area – never mind the attendees – were stunned by this point.
By the time bidding hit $10 million, I went so far as to abandon my blogging duties, close my laptop to take it all in, and capture what I knew was history on video.
As the price climbed ever-higher, a distant voice in the back of my mind was telling me to be disgusted – ‘It’s a guitar! This is absurd!’ And yet I was ooohing and aaahing, too, smiling and laughing in wonder as 10 minutes of bidding went to 15, and then 20. Finally, at $14.6 million, the hammer went down and I burst into applause like everyone else.
Incredibly, that Everest-summiting-like bidding war was followed by another; this one a scrap for Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar. A $1 – $2 million estimate, another extended bidding exchange – and a sale priced way beyond expectations, at $11.6 million. Again caught up in it all, I got the perfect capture of the magic moment. Listen to the crowd!
When Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang became the third guitar of the evening to pass the former record holder – which Irsay felt wasn’t worth the princely sum that was paid for it – it was almost an afterthought; still some applause, but not the shock and awe heard earlier in the evening.
Given the figures from previous lots and the fact that that particular guitar had sold for $4.55 million just three years earlier – it wasn’t as much of an estimate-obliterator as the Gilmour and Garcia instruments.
And that’s food for thought. David Gilmour is, of course, still going strong, while Jerry Garcia has been gone for 30 years, but these legendary guitars of the classic rock pantheon, in particular, continue to capture people’s imaginations and smash through the ceiling of their predicted value.
The $14.5 million sale represents a stunning epoch in the value of the guitar. It puts the Black Strat in the neighborhood of many of the most expensive Stradivarius violins ever sold; are there vintage instruments any more “serious” and respected than those?
I thought I was way too cynical and skeptical to get caught up in the fuss of watching people proverbially tossing millions of dollars into the air like graduation caps, but there was something about being in the presence of that guitar in particular.
In the middle of all that frenzied bidding, I thought of sitting in front of my parents’ small TV as a youngster, seeing the master wrangle a sublime take on the Comfortably Numb solo out of that jet-black six-string. ‘Huh. Maybe if I did have a spare $14 million left over after helping those less fortunate…’
