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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
