Later this month, an amplifier used by George Harrison when he was recording Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with the rest of The Beatles is going under the hammer in London. And it's expected to sell for somewhere between $80,000 and $110,000. We wouldn't be that surprised if it went for even more, because people pay insane amounts for Beatles memorabilia -- even for gross household appliances and musical instruments that had, at best, a very thin association with any Beatle. Look at this stuff and the ludicrous prices paid:
John Lennon's Toilet -- $14,800
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Mike Mitchell
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Probably not the guitar that later sold for $439,000.
Once you get past the fact that someone paid almost $15,000 (
the exact figure was £9,500) for a toilet (a pretty toilet, but still), you have to start thinking about (a), who thought to sell the thing at auction, and (b), who the hell wanted to buy it! Poo is poo, people -- even when it's coming out of a songwriting genius. And toilets are just poo receptacles. This poo receptacle was stored in a British builder's garden shed for forty years, after he was employed by Lennon in 1970 to remove it from his home in England. Only after the builder died did the toilet get sold. Probably by leechy relatives, we imagine. The purchaser remained anonymous, unsurprisingly. Who wants to own up to buying this?
A Guitar Paul McCartney Played a Couple of Times -- $439,000
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Mike Mitchell
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Probably not the guitar that later sold for $439,000.
Now, this one is completely mental, because it all seems to be based around the word of one person. But Ian James claimed, when putting an old acoustic Rex guitar up for auction in 2006, that he had taught Paul McCartney how to play his first chords on it -- and that it was "present" on the day that McCartney first met John Lennon at a fair in Liverpool. James also said it was "possible" that Lennon and George Harrison also played the guitar that same day. Well, anything's possible, isn't it? We'd want a lot of photographic evidence and verbal confirmation from the actual Beatles if we were going to throw almost half a million bucks (
We love music photography. Heck, we love photographers, too. But is the above photo of The Beatles worth $68,500? Of course it isn't! It's a photo. Not that we don't think the image is wonderful. We do. But, you know, if we had to choose between a photo or a down payment on a home, then we know which one we'd choose. Luckily for Mike Mitchell, when he auctioned off the image at
Christie's earlier this year, along with 49 other black-and-white prints of the Fab Four, someone wasn't thinking along those lines and threw a lot of cash at this. Mitchell's collection of photos ultimately went for $361,938. Lucky bastard.
One of George Harrison's Guitars -- $567,500Now, we understand it's a lovely guitar. And it's an important guitar, having been played by Harrison on
Revolver and John Lennon on
The White Album. But over half a million dollars for any guitar is just stupid, surely? The person who bought this at Christie's in 2004 didn't think so. But just think about what you could do with $567,500, and then try and justify anyone spending that amount of money on a single guitar. The lovely green piano Paul McCartney used to write "Yesterday" went for half that amount when it was auctioned! We're not sure we'd even pay that for one of Jesus' guitars, to be honest.
John Lennon's Rolls Royce -- $2.23 millionDamn. This is probably the coolest Rolls Royce currently in existence on the planet. It's like a wonderful glimpse into the past; a snapshot of history, if you will. It can't fail to spark your imagination -- just think about how much fun was had in this super fancy psychedelic machine. Woah. We'd do anything to get a look at this car, take a ride in this car, smell inside this car. Can you imagine owning this thing? Well, we can't, because it sold for the exorbitant price of $2.23 million, which is as insane as the guy who hand-painted it.
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