Elvis Presley's watch and John Lennon's suit fetch big bucks at Goldin auction
Goldin, a leading sports and pop culture memorabilia auction house, sold the engraved timepiece as part of its inaugural music memorabilia auction, which closed Wednesday night. Other high-selling items included a D.A. Millings & Son custom suit worn by John Lennon in 1963 ($102,480), a signed copy of Led Zeppelin's album 'Presence' ($19,520) and George Harrison's sunglasses ($47,590). Goldin also set a new sale record for a type 1 photo — or photo developed from an original negative within two years of when the picture was taken— of rapper Tupac Shakur, which sold for $10,370, according to the auction house.
Though sports and trading card auctions are Goldin's 'bread and butter,' the company is venturing more into pop culture, said head of revenue Dave Amerman. This transition is documented in Goldin's Netflix show, 'King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch,' which premiered in 2023 and was just renewed for a third season.
'We realized that we get so many music items and we build them into our pop culture sales, we just want to separate it and make its own event out of it,' Amerman told The Times.
Many of the Beatles items belonged to music promoter Chris Agajanian, who's been building his collection for more than 40 years. Agajanian owns more than 2,000 pieces of Beatles memorabilia and signed letters of provenance for many of the items in the Goldin sale.
The music auction also included more than 500 concert posters graded by the Certified Guaranty Company, the leader in comic book grading. Poster subjects ranged from the Grateful Dead and the Beatles to Sonic Youth and Blink-182.
In 2020, Goldin sold one of the most expensive albums of all time: a copy of Lennon and Yoko Ono's 'Double Fantasy' that Lennon unwittingly signed for his assassin, Mark David Chapman, just before the Beatle was shot in 1980. It went for $900,000.
Additionally, the auction house holds the record for most expensive toy sold at an auction: a 1979 prototype action figure of 'Star Wars' bounty hunter Boba Fett that went for more than $1 million in 2024.
Goldin's Hollywood Props & Memorabilia auction, featuring Harrison Ford's 'Indiana Jones' whip, a 'Star Wars' Stormtrooper prototype helmet and George Reeves' 'Superman' suit, is currently live. The auction closes Aug. 6.
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