David Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’ album cover sold for record-breaking sum at auction
The iconic Aladdin Sane David Bowie album cover has officially become the most expensive album artwork ever sold at auction after fetching £380,000 in London on November 5th.
Having been shot by Brian Duffy, a prolific photographer known for capturing the counterculture of the 1960s, the world-renowned image shows Bowie with a lightning stripe painted effortlessly across his face.
Earlier in September, the iconic cover of Aladdin Sane was already expected to become the world’s most expensive album artwork ever at the November 5th auction, which took place at Bonhams London.
In at close second, the cover of Led Zeppelin’s debut record previously garnered $325,000 when it went under the hammer in 2020.
During this specific auction, two other important Aladdin Sane historical pieces went up for sale.The only two contact sheets of Bowie for Aladdin Sane sold for £19,200, while the stool that he sat on for the shoot sold for £2,816.
Bonhams’ head of popular culture, Claire Tole-Moir, expressed her delight at the sale in a new statement, sharing, “The cover represents a landmark album by Bowie and a pivotal moment in Pop Culture history. We are delighted that its significance has been recognized today with a new world record price.”
The sale comes as the V&A has recently opened a huge Bowie archive within their storehouse, with thousands of items from the artist’s collections now available to view by the public.
Elsewhere in the Bowie universe, a new Channel 4 documentary exploring his last years, provisionally titled The Final Act, is in the works.
This announcement came shortly after news of another Bowie documentary, this time on the BBC’s side. Their 90-minute documentary will air on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer at some point in autumn 2026. Instead of focusing on his final years, their take will explore his time in Berlin between 1976 and 1978.
