One auction is already over and Boston’s RR Auction house just sold a previously long-lost collection of Bob Dylan documents for $495,000. The papers included unpublished lyrics written by the star, letters between him and late American blues musician Tony Glover, and transcripts of interviews between the pair.
The collection, which previously belonged to Glover and was auctioned off by his widow, was sold in separate lots and the majority were bought by one bidder whose identity has not been made public.
Next up on the auction block will be the drum kit Rush’s Neil Peart played between 1974 and 1977 — both onstage and on albums like Fly by Night and 2112.
The chrome Slingerland drum kit, which Peart purchased just weeks before his first Rush concert in August 1974, will be auctioned by Bonhams, which placed an $80,000 to $120,000 pre-auction estimate on the kit.
Peart, who died in January 2020 following a battle with brain cancer, also played the drum kit during the recording of the band’s first live album All the World’s a Stage, which “marked the end of Rush’s first chapter and Peart’s Slingerland drum kit was soon afterward retired,” Bonhams says.
Last (at least for the moment), but certainly not the least, is the copy of John Lennon’s Double Fantasy album that John Lennon signed for his caller Mark David Chapman just hours before his tragic death. The album cover shows The Beatles legend kissing his wife Yoko Ono on the cover, and it’s expected to sell for as much as $2 million at Goldin Auctions.
This rare John Lennon signed album is creating a buzz as one of the grisliest artifacts in rock’n’roll history seeking $850,000. Bob Zafian, a spokesman for the seller, says, “I have never come across a piece with such provenance. Police reports, fingerprint documentation, letters from the district attorney, it goes on and on.”
