Jim Irsay Collection Sets Memorabilia Auction Record, Fetching $94.5 Million at Christie's

Ringo Starr's drum chair at the center of a $94.5 million auction pile is not something you see twice in a lifetime. The Jim Irsay Collection sale at Christie's New York closed this month as the largest memorabilia auction in history, bringing in $94.5 million across four sales, with every single lot sold and the cumulative take landing at nearly four times the low pre-sale estimate.

The sale set 28 new world record prices, most notably the largest memorabilia auction in history, and produced the first two guitars to sell for more than $10 million. The collection included the drum head from Ringo Starr's kit used during the Beatles' first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964, which sold for a world-record $2,881,000. That "Drop T" logo drumhead is the kind of lot that stops everyone cold in the saleroom, and it did exactly that.

The percussion haul didn't stop there. Ringo Starr's first Ludwig kit, the one that anchored the early Beatles catalog, sold for a world-record $2,393,000. Christie's press materials noted the kit was "(broken in this sale)," a detail that will matter to anyone who follows the provenance of historic drums closely.

The headline of the entire four-day run, though, belonged to a guitar player. David Gilmour's "Black Strat" returned to the top of the heavyweight guitar price rankings at $14,550,000; Irsay had originally purchased the Fender Stratocaster in 2019 for what was then a world-record $3,975,000. The bidding war for that instrument ran over 20 minutes before the hammer came down. On any other night, $6,907,000 for Kurt Cobain's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Mustang and $11,560,000 for Jerry Garcia's "Tiger" would have been world records. Tiger was built by luthier Doug Irwin for Garcia over the course of six years and was the last guitar Garcia played at his final live performance at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995.

The sale's reach went far beyond strings and skins. Jack Kerouac's original typescript scroll for "On the Road" sold for $12,135,000. Country music star Zach Bryan purchased the Kerouac scroll and is in the process of converting the St. Jean Baptiste Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, into the Jack Kerouac Center. John Lennon's Broadwood upright piano, the instrument he used to compose songs for the Beatles' landmark 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," fetched $3,247,000, a world record for any Beatles object. Christie's had placed a pre-auction estimate of $400,000 to $600,000 on the piano, but the final price soared to $3,247,000.

Eric Clapton's "The Fool" SG sold for $3,003,000, a new record for a Gibson guitar, while his 1939 Martin 000-42, the one from his MTV Unplugged performance, changed hands for $4,101,000. George Harrison's Gibson SG Standard brought $2,271,000, a world record for the guitarist. Bob Dylan's handwritten lyrics for "The Times They Are a-Changin'" sold for $2,515,000. A Martin Committee trumpet played by Miles Davis carried an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000, yet ultimately sold for $1,651,000.

"The Irsay sale did justice to the brilliance of the collector, and of the monumental pieces he brought together, iconic objects that tell the story of our culture and our times," said Julien Pradels, president of Christie's Americas.

Bids were taken in person through Saturday and online until Tuesday, with a free public exhibition at Christie's New York at 20 Rockefeller Center drawing thousands of fans before and during the sale. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the philanthropic causes the late NFL owner championed during his lifetime. Jim Irsay died in March 2025 at 65. The collection he spent decades assembling just rewrote what the market will pay for the artifacts of rock history, and for drummers especially, the numbers attached to Ringo's Ludwig kit and that Ed Sullivan drumhead confirm that the seat behind the kit has never been more valuable.