As a child I would get Smash Hits magazine, cut out the pictures of Debbie Harry from Blondie, Clare Grogan from Altered Images and other artists of the day and stick them to my bedroom walls, eventually graduating to NME as an angst ridden teenager. I picked up a guitar and learnt and few chords and have been a dedicated three chord strummer ever since. I continued to buy vinyl records in the 1980s when my friends had moved to CDs mainly because I could not afford a CD player. I used to buy their redundant collections for the price of their favourite chart topping CD. I even sold my record collection years later to partially fund the setting up of the auction. A move which when I tell record collectors they raise their eyebrows as they would rather sell their souls to the devil, Robert Johnson style than sell their prized collections. So we have always prided ourselves on our records and musical instruments. We have had some interesting collections come in over the years. One small collection of four boxes saved from certain death at the tip made well over £4000. Then a dealer friend contacted me and said he had been asked to sell some guitars. He sent some blurry images and I had a look but from a photograph it was difficult to tell if they were authentic or not or what they would play like. He then sent me some provenance which is where the story gets more interesting, They had belonged to a session musician who had played with Pink Floyd, The Kinks, The Who and other legendary artists of the 1970’s. I realized these were not going to be low grade entry levels copies and I waited in anticipation for them to arrive. When they did I plugged in his Marshall stack and blew the cobwebs away. The two that did not look much were modified to his specifications and these were like Ferraris dressed as Morris Minors. There was also a Les Paul Standard, an Eddie Van Halen Wolfgang and an Eric Clapton signature series Fender Stratocaster as well as a brand new Telecaster. I was in heaven for the days prior to the sale strumming my three chords in my little office, crooning out John Prine and Oasis covers sipping a single malt.
Then came the sale day, a virtual sale with no viewing, same as ever in our Covid time. But that did not stop the buyers, the six guitars hammered out at £7770 with one buyer buying four out of the six available instruments, all going to collectors to be played. It was a shame it could not have been a sale with viewing as it would have nice to hear some musicians doing their stuff with them but this obviously did not effect the final outcome.
On the back of this I have decided to do an annual higher end collectable record and musical instrument sale, so dig out the old records you never play or that old Ibanez guitar gathering dust in the corner and give me a call.
