So items under the hammer may well owe their cachet to celebrities who are still alive and performing. There has also been a rise in auctions of items still owned by the relevant celebrities, as opposed to property from fan collections. “When I started working with Sotheby’s in 1999, collectibles was almost looked down upon as something for fans only,” he says. Julien says that the shift from antiques and classic portraits to memorabilia was a long time coming. We had one client who offered over $600,000 to buy from the winning bidder, but the buyer in our 2019 auction declined to sell it.” “The sale of the guitar made $334,000 seem cheap. “After we sold Kurt Cobain’s guitar for over $6m last year, we had buyers want the cardigan that we sold for $334,000,” says Julien. The Unplugged guitar went for more last year. Early auctions included the dress in which Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to President John F Kennedy (sold for $4.8m in 2016) and the moss-green cardigan Kurt Cobain wore for Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance (sold once in 2015 for $140,800 and again in 2019 for $334,000). Photograph: Frank Micelotta Archive/Getty ImagesĪlthough Christie’s started its rock and pop memorabilia section in the 80s, Julien’s, which began in 2003, was the first auction house to deal exclusively in pop culture items. Julien's Auctions bosses have broken world records in the past with the sale of Kurt Cobain memorabilia, including the cardigan he wore on MTV Unplugged in New York which sold for a record $334,000, his In Utero tour Fender Mustang guitar which sold for $340,000, and a Nirvana paper plate set list written in Cobain's handwriting, which sold for a record $22,400.Kurt Cobain wearing the cardigan that sold for $334,000 in 2019 during Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance. Phospher Bronze guitar strings, three Dunlop 60mm guitar picks, and a small black velvet pouch containing a miniature knife, fork, and spoon lapel pins each with pinbacks.Ĭobain daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, lost the guitar in her nasty divorce battle after her ex-husband, Isaiah Silva, maintained it was given to him as a wedding gift, and therefore he was the rightful owner of the instrument. The item also features a partial set of Martin & Co. The guitar was the seventh of only 302 D-18Es built by Martin and was customised by Cobain.Īccompanying the sale of the guitar is its original hard-shell case, personalised by Cobain with a flyer from the punk rock band Poison Idea's 1990 album " Feel the Darkness", three baggage claim ticket stubs, and an Alaska Airlines Fragile sticker affixed to the case. "Nirvana's Unplugged is one of my favourite records of all time, and easily one of the best live performances ever captured on film.
"When I heard that this iconic guitar was up for auction I immediately knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure it and use it as a vehicle to spotlight the struggles that those in the performing arts are facing and have always faced.," the new owner explains.
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