What is the most expensive guitar ever sold?
The humble guitar. Six strings, a threat board and a body. It’s responsible for the cultural movement that was the blues and rock music, two parts of musical history that are the foundation of so many different styles and sounds. We wouldn’t be anywhere without the guitar; the people know it. They are iconic, so it becomes almost impossible for us now to think of some musicians without picturing their guitars.
We think of Angus Young, and we think of the red and black Gibson SG. Any thoughts of Jimi Hendrix come equipped with the white Stratocaster with the strings the wrong way around. Slash has the Les Paul, Dave Grohl has the dot, and Jimmy Page has the double neck. These guitars have become collector’s items in their own right, as fans of music everywhere want to own the instruments that are just as associated with musical developments as the artists who played them. The result? Some eye-watering amounts that have been paid to own this memorabilia.
If you Google “cheap guitars” now, you will see they can be bought for £40. Granted, they’re nothing special, but they’re enough to learn on and string chords together with, which is all you need to get started on a musical journey and contribute to rock’s history. However, while prices may begin with that, they climb exponentially. Jerry Garcia’s Wolf Guitar sold at an auction in 2017 for £1.57 million, John Lennon’s Gibson went for £1.9m, and Eddie Van Halen’s Kramer went for just over £3m. These sums beg the question, what is the most expensive guitar ever sold?
On November 18th, 1993, Nirvana played and recorded their MTV Unplugged in New York. Their performance was recorded onto an album and for TV, with the broadcast going out the following month and the album released nearly a year later. It was an unplugged performance like no other; as Dave Grohl said, “We’d seen the other Unpluggeds and didn’t like many of them because most bands would treat them like rock shows – play their hits like it was Madison Square Garden, except with acoustic guitars.”
Nirvana decided to mix it up. They played some hits and a few lesser-known songs and also did a cover of David Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold the World’. They also had members of the Meat Puppets join them on stage. The show did well at the time, showing another layer to the grunge band, but it cemented itself as an essential recording when it became the last televised performance Nirvana would ever do.
For the gig, Cobain played a 1959 Martin D-18E acoustic electric guitar. It has since been seen by millions of adoring fans who watch the performance on repeat and mourn the loss of one of music’s greatest minds. This is also the most expensive guitar ever sold, as it went at an auction in June 2020 for £4.9m. The sale broke multiple records, including the most expensive guitar, the most expensive acoustic guitar and the most expensive piece of rock memorabilia.
What is the most expensive instrument?
One thing missing from the list of records Kurt Cobain’s guitar managed to break is the most expensive instrument ever. There are two potential frontrunners for the most expensive instrument ever sold, both of which are string instruments, specifically, the last preserved Stradivarius instruments on the planet.
One, the ‘Lady Blunt’, a violin that supposedly belonged to Lady Anne Blunt, was sold in 2011 for $15.9m. It was sold to raise funds for the Tohoku tsunami, so the astronomical amount is justified. However, there are rumours that a Duport Stradivarius cello was sold in 1974 for £20m. This purchase has not been verified, but if it were, it would officially be the most expensive instrument ever sold.
