The long-lost guitar Prince played on during his Purple Rain, Sign o the Times, and Diamonds and Pearls tours has stunned auction experts by selling for over $563,000 (£456,000).
Californian based auction house Julien’s Auctions were offered the custom-made 1984 Blue Angel Cloud 2 instrument by restoration expert John Woodland. The guitar went missing in the late 1990s, with Woodland spending 18 months tracking it down and returning it to its former glory.
“The guitar is considered one of the most historically important guitars played by Prince that has ever come up for auction,” said Julien’s Auctions in a press release.
The original estimate for the guitar was appraised at $100,000 (£81,700) to $200,000 (£163,400), but auction experts had expected the instrument to go under the hammer for more than three times that amount after authenticating it.
Julien’s Auctions previously achieved the world record for the highest price ever paid for a Prince guitar sold at auction, when the Kiss hitmaker’s teal Cloud guitar sold for $700,000 (£572,000) in 2017.
The 1984 Blue Angel Cloud 2 was not the only highlight at the house’s two-day Music Icons auction in Beverly Hills over the weekend.
Kurt Cobain’s 1959 Martin D-18E electric-acoustic guitar, which he strummed during Nirvana’s historic MTV Unplugged gig in 1993, also shattered auction records after going under the hammer for over $6 million (£4.8 million), becoming the most expensive Nirvana item ever sold at auction.
Meanwhile, Elvis Presley’s stage worn macrame belt sold for a shocking $298,000 (£241,000) – nearly 30 times its estimate, and Madonna’s Vogue video white satin gown went under the hammer for $179,200 (£145,000) – almost nine times more than the expected sale figure.
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