Link to a BBC report on the Auction

The Lennon toilet exceeded its estimate by a substantial amount.
Here's the report by BBC News Liverpool Online

Auction Information.

A few useful links.

Details of the Auction and viewing day times.

Download the Catalogue and details off added lots

A full list of items covered in this blog, with lot numbers.

How to bid


Auction Press Release/Information - includes information on Lennon's toilet.

Photos of some of the lots

How to contact us

Lot numbers for items covered on this blog

Here is a full list of links to posts on this blog, now with item numbers.


8 Anthology 2 Press Kit

19 Chaos & Creation Print signed by Mike McCartney

24 Margate Programme

25 Wimbledon Palais Programme

29 Wings Japanese tour programme

30 Blackbird Singing Book signed by Paul

31 Blackbird Singing Tshirt signed by Paul

32 EMI Promo poster for Cilla Black

33 EMI Promo poster for Billy J Kramer

34 EMI Promo poster for Gerry & Pacemakers

37 Record Store Day 2010 Beatles Single

43 1964 Cavern Card and 1965 form

52 Stuart Sutcliffe Sketch

53 Iron Door Card

54 7" Record Case

55 12" Record Case

56 Disk-Go Record Case

61 Thank U Very Much signed by Mike McCartney

62 A note from Ringo

65 Trading Cards

68 New Sound Guitar

69 Toy Drum

70 Half made model kits

71 Unmade George model kit

72 Unmade John model kit

80 Early fan club items

81 Apple Tree Poster

82 George Yellow Sub hanger

84 Garland For Linda presskit

93 Mike Mac's White and Blacks signed

99 Piece of stage from YMCA Birkenhead

100 Unused River Boat Shuffle ticket

102 Tatler Cinema Handbill for Beatles Film

103 Unused Liverpool Christmas Show ticket

104 Receipt from NEMS

105 Cilla autographed card

106 Promo card signed by George (who has signed for the others)

120 Ringo Remco Doll

130 Signed Hard Day's Night premier e Programme

149 Peppermint Lounge and other club items

146 Apple Watch

150 Beatles Heswall Jazz Club Handbill

156 Piece of stage from YMCA Birkenhead

159 Lodon Town Press kit

167 Quarry bank school cap

168 Liverpool Institue patch

169 Liverpool Institute Green Book

170 Institute Speech day programme

173 Institute magazine from 1963

180 Signed Ram music book

182 Unused Wings ticket

198 Modern press kit for Cavern Club

199 1961 Cavern Card

200 Signed 1962 Cavern Card

201 1962 Cavern Card

202 1963 Cavern Card

208 Invite to the reoopening of the Cavern in 1966

216 Hottest Hits Eskimo Sleeve

217 Bealte Wig

218 Apple Record Catalogue 1973

220 Beatles Book Christmas Special

223 Full Set of Remco Dolls

227 Apple Beatles 1969 press book

229 Stuart Sutcliffe Letter

230 Signed Parlophone Promo card

232 Complete set of Beatles Mnthlies

238 Cashbah Club card

240 Signed Thank Yur Lucky Stars photo

241 Signed Promo card, signed by John, Paul and George

241a Stereo Gold Label Please Please Me (additional lot not listed in main catalogue)

241b Autographs on page of autograph book (additional lot not listed in main catalogue)

244 Juke Box Jury Ticket

246 Brighton Programme

247 Gaumont Bournemouth Programme

252 Handwritten note from John Lennon

253a Gold lighter inscribed from John and Yoko (additional lot not listed in main catalogue)

253b Life With The Lions signed by John and Yoko (additional lot not listed in main catalogue)

254 Yellow Sub Soundtrack presskit

260 Merseybeat group tickets

261 Merseybeat group business cards

264a Paul and Linda signatures (additional item not listed in main catalogue)

264b Photo of Paul taken outside Forthlin Road (additional item not listed in main catalogue)

267 Yellow Bike seat

269 Million Apple note

285 Beetles plate

301 Reproduction lamp

Two very special lots as final additions to the auction.

The following two items are additional lots in this year's auction and do not appear in the main catalogue. Both items are the property of Malcolm Davies who was a recording engineer at Abbey Road Studios.

A gold Dunhill lighter, engraved "Malcolm From J&Y 1969" A gift to Mr Davies from John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Estimate - £1750 - £2500


A copy of the album Life With The Lions signed boldly on the inner sleeve "To Malcolm Thanks From John & Yoko" with a hand drawn doodle of the pair by John Lennon.

Estimate £1500-£1750


('’)

---

I read the news today...oh boy!

The Beatles Auction has made the newspapers, thanks to Lennon's loo!

The Mirror

The Liverpool Echo

The Guardian

The Telegraph

How to bid on items in the auction.

How do I bid?
If you are attending the auction and may be looking to bid on any item(s) you must register at the desk before the sale begins. You will need to provide us with contact details and we will give you a bidding paddle with a number on it. You need to be sure the auctioneer has written this number down if you are a successful bidder.

How do I make an absentee bid?
You can use the bidding form on this site, but please contact us if you do not receive an acknowledgement via email that we have received your bid. You can also fax your bid to us on 0113 2779750, or from the USA 0144113 2779750. Or you can email bids to auction@thebeatleshop.co.uk, again please get in touch if an emailed bid is not acknowledged.

What methods of payment can I use?
We accept cash, credit card (subject to a 3% administration charge) and personal cheques (drawn on a UK bank, with bankers guarantee cards within the limit.) Please see Buyers Notes for more details. Also please note that a buyer’s premium of 10% of the hammer price is payable by the buyer’s of all lots, together with VAT on such premium.



IMPORTANT! Please read the Notes for Buyers.

Repost: Catalogue download and photographs of lots.

The text for the catalogue is now available as a pdf by clicking here.

You can see photos of some of the lots at our flickr account.

Click here.

All the photos are titled by their lot numbers. In some cases there are more than one photo of an item (eg when photos are signed on the reverse etc).

Photographs of some of the lots.

You can now see photos of some of the lots at our flickr account.
Click here.
All the photos are titled by their lot numbers. In some cases there are more than one photo of an item (eg when photos are signed on the reverse etc)

Mentioned by the BBC

The auction has been mentioned on the BBC news website.

Click the picture to visit the news report.

Two additions lots especially for McCartney Fans

The following two lots do not appear in the main auction catalogue. They will be added to the auction listing on the day of the auction.


This Paul McCartney autograph in an autograph book features a face doodle drawn by Paul and a leaf from the garden at Cavendish Avenue has been sellotaped to the page underneath the signature.  There is also a Linda McCartney autograph that has been stapled into the opposite page.

Estimate - £375 - £425



Also added to the sale is a black and white photograph of Paul McCartney aged approximately 21 years old outside his home of Forthlin Road. The photograph comes with the negative and is sold with copyright.
The photograph will be available to see on the viewing day.
Estimate - £375- £400.

Viewing Day and Entrance in the Auction.

All the items due to be sold in the auction will be available for viewing on Friday 27th August at The Paul McCartney Auditorium, Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts.  Entry to the viewing day is free and it will be open from  11am to 4pm. Please be sure to give yourself plenty of time to see the items you would like to examine. 

Attendance of the auction on Saturday is by catalogue only. Catalogues are priced £1 and available from The Beatles Shop on Mathew Street. For more details about how to get a catalogue click here. 

Catalogues will also be available at the Viewing Day and on the door on the day of the Auction. Each catalogue admits one person.

A downloadable version of the catalogue is available by clicking here. (Currently only a text version, hopefully the photo pages will also be available very soon.)

For information on how to find both the shop and the auction venue please click here.

Liverpool Beatles Auction 2010

In the 20 years of organising the annual Liverpool Beatles Auction the people at The Beatles Shop on Mathew Street have seen some interesting items go under the hammer, but this year sees one of the more unusual ones - John Lennon's toilet.

The toilet was originally part of a bathroom in John's Tittenhurst Park homes which he purchased in 1969.  The loo was removed during refurbishment by a builder named John Hancock. Lennon suggested he take the ornately decorated toilet home and "put some flowers in it."  It is being sold by the builder's son-in-law after being carefully stored in a garden shed for the last forty years.

Also from Tittenhurst Park comes a small harmonica that belonged to John's son, Julian. It was given to Mr Hancock by John who asked him to take it home as Julian was driving him mad with it. He said he would tell Julian it was lost.

Both items are to be sold in The Annual Beatles Auction to be held at The Paul McCartney Auditorium at the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts on the morning of Saturday 28th August.

Lennon's Toilet carries an estimate of £750 - £1000

The harmonica is estimated at £800 - £1000

---

The auction aims to have something for everything. Being based and organised in Liverpool there are a lot of items of local interest.  This year there are several handbills for local concerts. Not all of them feature the Beatles, but there is a healthy interest in other Merseybeat bands among collectors.  In fact there are several lots made up of Merseybeat group promotional and business cards.

Cavern items feature every year.  This year they range from a rare piece of Cavern stage, an invitation to the Grand Reopening  of the Club in 1966 through to Club membership cards covering the early 60s.

---

Not too many Beatles records are rare enough to be worth large amounts of money.  An exception is their first album, Please Please Me, but only with the right sort of label.   In the auction there is a "Gold Label" mono version of the album which is estimated to reach £125 - £175.

Rarer than that in an added lot (not in the catalogue) is the Gold Label stereo version of the same album.  Stereo records were rarer in the early as they were slightly more expensive than their mono counterparts and most people only have mono record players anyway.   This means that the stereo version is estimated to reached £2000 - £2500 - quite a difference.

By  the end of the 60s it was a different matter and more stereo records were sold than mono ones. This means that by the time the John and Yoko avant garde album Two Virgins was released it was the stereo version that was on general release, and mono versions had to special ordered.  In the first year of its release only 32 copies of the mono version were sold.  A rare mono copy of this album is up for sale in the auction and carries an estimate of £2000-£2500.   The album is most famous for its controversial cover featuring a photograph of John and Yoko in the nude. Several record shops at the time stocked the disc in a brown paper wrapper.

The Liverpool Beatles Auction 2010 Catalogue is now available from The Beatles Shop on Mathew Street.
Details of how to get a copy can be found by clicking here.
A downloadable text copy of the Catalogue is available by clicking here.

Absentee Bidders

Please see the Buyers section of the FAQs for information on how to place absentee bids.

Please note, this is not an online auction, nor are we able to have phone bidders on the day.

Added Lots: Please Please Me Stereo Gold Label and Autographs.

The following items do not appear in the main auction catalogue. A full addendum list will appear here shortly.

This Please Please Me album is a Stereo Gold Label version. It has Dick James credits indicating that it is a first pressing.

Estimate - £1800-£2200

This set of autographs, featuring three Beatles – John, George and Paul, was obtained at Liverpool Airport in 1963. They are stuck into an autograph book which also contains a Pete Best autograph that was obtained at a later date.

Estimate £1000-£2200

---

Press enquiries should be made through the same contact link. Better images of items can be made available to the press upon request.

Auction Catalogue Available Now.

The Auction Catalogue is now available from The Beatles Shop.

To have the catalogue sent to you in the UK, please send a £2 cheque or postal order to The Beatles Shop, 31 Mathew Street, Liverpool, L2 6RE. This covers the cost of the catalogue and the postage and packaging. Email auction@thebeatleshop.co.uk for other payment methods. Please put "Catalogue" in the subject line.

For elsewhere in the world the cost is £3.50.  Use the email above to find out about payment methods.

Alternatively you can call into the shop and purchase the catalogue for £1.

  

---

Press enquiries should be made through the same contact link. Better images of items can be made available to the press upon request.

Download The 2010 Liverpool Beatles Auction Catalogue

The text for the catalogue is now available as a pdf by clicking here.
Hopefully photo pages will follow shortly.

---

Press enquiries should be made through the same contact link. Better images of items can be made available to the press upon request.