A design promoting a 1965 tour by The Rolling Stones fired up a bidding battle at Bushey Auctions (15% + VAT buyer’s premium) in Hertfordshire.
Consigned from a private home in north-west London, it was from the gig in Colston Hall, Bristol, dated Sunday, September 26.
It is believed the previous owner of the 2ft 6in x 3ft 4in (76.5cm x 1.02m) was a collector and may have attended the concert.
With a £100-150 estimate, Bushey received considerable pre-sale interest and commission bids in excess of £2800 were left in advance. On sale day, eight phone bidders – five from overseas – competed with internet and room bidders and the poster sold to a UK collector for £13,000.
Bushey Auctions’ Richard Kluk said: “The vendor wanted to sell it so we gave it a ‘come and get me price’. The poster had a couple of tears and the corners were worn, so I took the condition into account. The most I have seen posters go for previously is £6000.”
He added: “I have now been told there are only nine other examples of this poster known and that the condition of this example is better than most.”
Usually, the value of concert posters increases if they are from early days of the formation of a band.
In May, Welsh saleroom Rogers Jones sold a poster for an August 12, 1963, Beatles concert in Llandudno for £28,000. It was just before the band was about to break into superstardom, propelled that summer by She Loves You (released August 23).
However, this 1965 Stones poster was still regarded as rare, despite it being from two years after the band’s first British tour and three years after its first incarnation as Little Boy Blue And The Blue Boys.
The band’s first gig billed as ‘The Rollin’ Stones’ is reported to have been in July 1962, at the Marquee Club in Oxford Street.
