Pop & Rock Collectables

 After my hectic weekend the office seems almost tranquil! Still as the wedding gets nearer no doubt things will start getting a little more exciting. We are driving down to the West Country on Wednesday to start the final build up, so in the meantime there's endless discussion about the finer details of getting married.

Back in the world of antiques and collectables I noticed a very interesting story in the Daily Telegraph about a letter John Lennon had written 40 years ago. He wrote to an aspiring musician Steve Tilston in 1971 care of the magazine ZigZag (which is a highly collectable publication). The letter never got to Steve and it now belongs to an American collector and is estimated to be worth £7,000. You can read the rest HERE.

What do Stanley Kubrick and Michael Philip Jagger have in common? Well today is their birthday. Mick was born in 1943 and Stanley K in 1928. Now, you'll be wondering where is all this going? Well if you look in our online catalogue of almost 63,000 items you will find a Spartacus', original insert poster signed by Kirk Douglas, from the film directed by Stanley Kubrick, and also signed by Kirk Douglas, Stanley Kubrick, Sir Laurence Olivier, Woody Strode, Alex North, and others.

The poster dates from1960, 2 years before Mick and the Rolling Stones played their first gig. Two years later, in the summer of 1964, they were touring America. This souvenir booklet featuring the band, with Mick out front, is valued at between £35 and £45.

 I'm sure many of you have read the news that John Lennon's hand written lyrics for The Beatles, 'A Day in The Life' were sold for $1.2 million by Sotheby's in New York yesterday to an anonymous American buyer. The double-sided sheet of paper features the lyrics, starting with 'I read the news today oh boy'  are  written in capital letters, along with various corrections. The lyrics previously belonged to Beatles road manager Mal Evans. What some of you probably don't know is that these lyrics originally sold in London in 1992 fr £56,000, around $100,000 at the time – all in all not a bad little investment.

Prices for Beatles memorabilia continue to cofound many experts but sometimes, despite great provenance and authenticating material some things still do not sell. In this case it was a Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band failing to meet its reserve on eBay. The album was signed, albeit rather badly in the case of John, Paul and George, by all for Beatles and the seller had a hand written note and photographs of two of the Beatles signing the album. The fact is that the album cover was in poor condition and as I said the signatures were not good ones. Bidding stalled at a little over $31,000, which failed to meet the seller's reserve price.

I was talking to a friend of mine today who knows a thing or two about the Beatles (he's just finishing a book about them) and I told him about the LP failing to sell. He said did I know how many people were featued on Peter Blake's amazing cover? I didn't! In fact there are 70 including Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Apparently John Lennon wanted to include cut outs of Hitler, Jesus and Gandhi but he was talked out of it.

I've just come off the telephone from talking with a friend of mine who arrived back from Amsterdam where he had been to the opening of a photographic exhibition – he had luckily booked to go there and back on Eurostar and so avoided the disappointment of travelling, or  not, by plane. The exhibition of rock and pop photography from the 1960s is by a well known Danish photographer – Bent Rej.

As it says on the gallery's web site. . . Millions of words have been written about the sixties – the groups, the singers and the scene - but nothing captures the magic quite like brilliant photography. It was a time when music was not burdened with the labels that have since become commonplace. Pop music was…well it was pop music. Music marketing hadn’t been invented and while image was everything it wasn’t manipulated and managed like it is today. Music was either in the Pop, Jazz or Classical sections of record shops and Pop was everything from The Mothers of Invention and Jimi Hendrix to Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, and Tich.

These kind of limited edition prints may or may not increase in value over the next 20, 30, 50 or 100 years but they will be a beautiful addition to anyone's home. You can read more about Bent's photography that is on display in both Rotterdam and Amsterdam HERE