Personal collection of Ringo Starr of more than 1, 300 clothes, instruments, pieces of jewelry and other items raised a total of $9.2 million in the auction at Julien’s, Beverly Hills.
The biggest sale was a Ludwig Drum Kit – that was used by Starr on hits including “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “I Want to Hold your Hand” – was bought for $2.1 million by Indianapolis Colts owner, Jim Irsay. The drum kit is an addition to Irsay’s collection of guitars from Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon. Irsay joked that after 45 years, the Beatles were together again in his home.
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The enthusiastic collector also bought a Rickenbacker guitar gifted to the Starr from Lennon. Irsay paid $910, 000 for the guitar.
Despite the heavy price he paid for the Starr kit, Irsay expressed some anxiety over whether he’d be outbid. “The auctioneer started bidding at ‘Do I have $10 million?’ and I thought, ‘What the fuck!’ I thought some billionaire madman might say ‘I have $10 million, what the hell, ‘” Irsay said. When the opening number was recalibrated to $1 million, the bidding started to heat up, but Irsay finally placed the high bid after some more nervous moments. “It took like five minutes to say ‘Going once, going twice.'”
“The White Album, ” with number 0000001 believed to be the most expensive record ever, was sold for $790, 000.
Despite being No 1 ever to be produced and a personal copy of Starr’s, it had a very modest pre-auction estimate of $40, 000 to $60, 000, but the final selling price was more than 10 times that. The previous record was set by Elvis Presley’s first acetate recording, which was sold at $300, 000. As evident from the final selling price, the “White Album” smashed the record by more than doubling the figure.
BBC news reported that the album was kept in a bank vault in London for the last 35 years. “We didn’t think, ‘We’ll keep it for 50 years and it will be in pristine condition.’ Whoever gets it, it will have my fingerprints on it.” “Some of the stuff, it’s a real surprise that we still had it because it’s been in storage for so long, ” Starr said. “I don’t mind getting rid of a lot of stuff and it goes to good use. That’s the deal.”
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