NEW YORK – British rock legend Eric Clapton parted with 70 of his guitars in a charity auction on Wednesday that drew hundreds of fans and aficionados, and broke sale estimates. Clapton’s 1948 Gibson hollow body guitar brought in $83,000, making it the most expensive item in the auction. Its estimated value stood at $30,000.
Most items sold for much higher than estimated by Bonhams auction house. The auction included numerous Fender Stratocaster guitars, which the legendary guitarist is so closely associated with, including a black model he used during the Cream Reunion concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London and New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2005. Clapton’s signature Stratocaster sold for $51,000 in the auction, which was carried out simultaneously in New York, Los Angeles, London and online. Proceeds will go to the Crossroads Center in Antigua, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center which Clapton, himself a recovered alcoholic and former heroin addict, founded in 1998.
An acoustic 12-string Martin guitar Clapton played on his song Motherless Child sold for $70,000, way above its estimated $5,000 price tag. Another guitar that drew auctioneers’ attention was a 2006 replica – down to the cigarette stains on its headstock – of Clapton’s “Blackie” Stratocaster, which he played throughout the 1970s. It fetched more than $30,000.
The original Blackie was bought by musical instruments chain store Guitar Center for a record $959,500 in 2004.
The auction also offered dozens of Clapton’s amplifiers, including a vintage 1960s Supro amp said to have been used by guitarist Jimmy Page on the Led Zeppelin II album. It went under the hammer for $28,000. This isn’t the first time Clapton put his instruments up for auction. In 1999, he raised more than $5 million and in 2004, another $7.4 million that went toward the Crossroads Center.
