Not all guitar auctions yield record sales. Blockbuster auctions like the Jim Irsay Collection that broke all the records – 23 of them, including for most expensive guitar sold as David Gilmour’s Black Strat fetched $14.5m – are exceptional.
They speak to the cultural significance of the instruments, and Irsay’s Collection was like no other. This was an auction that saw someone pay $6,907,000 for Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang, $11,560,000 for Jerry Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar and both would have been world records.
