David Gilmour's guitars selling for millions, breaking records at charity auction

The David Gilmour Guitar Collection charity auction happened today at Christie’s in New York with over 120 axes up for bid, many of which featured on classic Pink Floyd albums, went for well above estimates. Way, way above. His famed 1969 Black Fender Stratocaster, which he used on most Floyd albums in the ’70s broke the world record for any guitar sold at auction, going for a whopping $3,975,000. It was estimated at $100-150k! That was not his only record-breaker. His white 1954 Fender Strat, valued between $100-150 thousand, just sold for $1,815,000 after a four minute bidding war and set a world record for a Stratocaster at auction. His 1969 Martin D-35 Nazareth acoustic, which was cited as David Gilmour’s favorite guitar and used as his primary studio acoustic since 1971, was valued between $10-20 thousand but sold for $1,095,000. That tops the previous auction record for a D-35 (Eric Clapton’s 1939 OO0-42 which sold for $791,500 in 2004). And his The 1958 Gretsch White Penguin went for $447,000 which was also a record-breaker.

Other items from the 120 guitars he had up for action: His 1976 Ovation acoustic, which featured on “Pigs on the Wing” and much of Animals, brought $399k (estimate: $3-5k); the Jedson steel guitar used on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” sold for $300k (estimate: $2k); and a 1966 Strat fetched $423k (estimate: $10-15k).

In total, Gilmour’s guitar auction brought in $21,490,750 which will go to his ClientEarth charitable foundation that gives money to famine relief, homelessness and “displacement of people throughout the world.

https://twitter.com/ChristiesInc/status/1141745358177013761

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this post was updated throughout the day.