Christie's Pop Culture auctions - US & UK

As mentioned last week, Christies will be having another major Pop Culture/Music auction in the UK on July 1. And now preceding that here in NYC, they will have an additional auction of the same sort of stuff on June 23, with viewings June 19-22. The items can be viewed here and an ecatalog of everything can be viewed here. Below are what I found to be some of the more interesting items available.


The Who crew tour bag circa 1970's


The Who 1965


Velvet Underground 1966


Velvet Underground 1966


Television & Blondie UK tour 1977


Sex Pistols official 'zine 1977


Sex Pistols, Manchester UK 1977


Sex Pistols promo poster 1977


Little Richard et al 1957


John Lee Hooker 1975


James Brown 1966


The Jam 1977


The Factory Club repro 2003 (Peter Saville)


The Factory Club 1978/79


The Clash Manchester UK 1977


Can 1971


Buzzcocks 1977 (Linder)


Bo Diddley 1955


Studio 54 opening night invite 1977

Christie's Punk/Rock auction results

The results from Christie's Punk/Rock auction are in, and for the most part were underwhelming. Some items met or exceeded their estimated prices, but many fell below. It didn't surprise me as I thought a lot of their estimates were high when I received the catalog a few weeks ago. That's not to say it doesn't have me pondering the possibility of selling some of the crap I've accumulated over the years.

Here are a few observations after many years seeing this stuff around, or not, owning & selling some of it myself.

Underpriced - Buzzcocks single promo poster ($188):


Overpriced - Smiths first album promo poster ($563):


Probably about right - Clash Bond's poster ($2750, offered in lot with a few others. These originally sold for $5 at the Bond's concerts!):


Definitely overpriced - Clash Sandinista promo poster ($1063, offered in lot with a few others):


Underpriced - Clash second album (in US) promo poster ($875, offered in lot with others)


Here's a story from today's NY Times about it.

Echo & the Bunnymen news

I certainly missed this a couple of days ago, and it will save me a trip to London. It's very surprising because I can't remember the last time they played a venue the size of Radio City. I saw them headline two years ago at SxSW in front of over 10,000, but that was a free outdoor show, hometown band Spoon was also on the bill, and it was during SxSW. I'm game...