Musical Instruments & Memorabilia

A c.1964 publicity photograph signed by all four members of The Beatles sold for £13,000 at Bristol auction house Auctioneum (21% buyer’s premium).

The music memorabilia sale at Omega (28.8% buyer’s premium inc VAT) on November 29 included the handwritten lyrics to two tracks on David Bowie’s 1972 classic The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

She was the first female broadcaster to be heard on Radio 1 and the only journalist to accompany the Beatles during a four-day coach trip when they filmed their Magical Mystery Tour TV special.

The Dutch diplomat, musician, writer and sinologist Robert Hans van Gulik (1910-67), also known as Gao Luopei, was a great admirer of traditional Chinese literati culture.

A collection of correspondence penned by leading figures of the 20th century to an Oxford academic raised more than £20,000 for charity at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) on October 10.

The phenomenon of rubbing a wet finger around the rim of a wine goblet to produce a note is as old as glassmaking.

A copy of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy album signed by all four members of the band sold to a phone bidder for £15,000 .

Sensational was the only word for it.

A previously unrecorded 18th century manuscript containing 75 pieces of traditional Scottish music sold for £5000 at Lyon & Turnbull (plus 26% buyer’s premium).

The original working lyrics for 'Heartbreak Hotel' carry an estimate of $200,000-220,000 at GWS Auctions’ sale titled Artifacts of Hollywood & Music in Agoura Hills, California, on August 26.

The HMV 900 was one of first television receivers designed by the Marconi-EMI Television Company, the firm that also provided the technology for Britain’s first television service.

A musical ‘captain’s desk’ davenport sold for £9500 at Tennants’ (22% buyer’s premium) Scientific and Musical Instruments sale in Leyburn on May 17.

Until his death in 2022, the musicologist and collector Rudolf Ewerhart lived in Wassenach, some 20 miles to the west of Koblenz.

A letter of apology written by George Harrison after two autograph-hunting schoolgirls got a distinctly unfriendly reception when they turned up on the doorstep of his home took £6100 at auction.

Musical automata were the top hits at Tennants’ (22% buyer’s premium) auction of scientific and musical instruments and cameras.