Pick a Day

Music History Events: Big Spenders

November 24, 2015 The only copy of Wu-Tang Clan's new double album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin is sold at auction. The buyer is not Wu-Tang obsessive Quentin Tarantino as many hoped, but Martin Shkreli, a 32-year-old pharmaceutical executive notorious for buying a drug company and raising the price of their AIDS drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill.More

September 5, 2008 The first Fender Stratocaster set alight on stage by Jimi Hendrix is auctioned. The guitar sells for $575,000 to collector Daniel Boucher - less than the $1 million predicted. It is one of only two guitars definitively burned by Hendrix - the other was at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

October 17, 2000 At a charity auction organized by Mick Fleetwood in London, George Michael pays £1.5 million for the upright piano on which John Lennon wrote the 1971 hit "Imagine."

July 16, 1996 The Sultan of Brunei, the world's richest man, marks his 50th birthday with a Michael Jackson concert on the Borneo Island. Jackson earns about $15 million for the performance, which is free to the 60,000 in attendance.

August 14, 1985 Three years after their duet "The Girl Is Mine," Paul McCartney advises Michael Jackson to invest in publishing. Jackson makes a winning bid of $47.5 million for the rights to over 250 Lennon-McCartney Beatles songs owned by ATV publishing, which turns out to be a great investment, but kills their friendship.More

July 2, 2014 In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a new group called The Raskins play their first show on the Mötley Crüe Final Tour, which also includes Alice Cooper. They later süe the Crüe, claiming they paid $1 million for the privilege, but received heaps of abuse in return.More

June 23, 1990 Actor Gary Busey, best-known for his lead role in the controversial 1978 biopic The Buddy Holly Story, purchases one of Buddy's guitars, complete with tooled leather case made by the rocker, in auction for approximately $240,000.

September 15, 2020 Sotheby's holds the first-ever auction of hip-hop memorabilia, which includes a set of Tupac Shakur's love letters ($75,600), Slick Rick's eye patch ($25,200), and Salt-N-Pepa's jackets ($23,940). The marquee item is the plastic crown Notorious B.I.G. wore on his last photo shoot, which sells for $594,750.

December 6, 2013 After its authenticity is verified on the PBS series History Detectives, the Fender Stratocaster that Bob Dylan played in his historic performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 is purchased for an astounding $965,000. It had spent the previous 48 years with the family of Dylan's personal pilot, who received no reply when he told Dylan to retrieve the gear he left behind.

January 9, 2012 The White Stripes frontman Jack White appears on the History Channel show American Pickers. In the episode, White buys a stuffed elephant head for the sticker price of $12,500.

September 6, 1988 Elton John cleans house in what amounts to the greatest garage sale ever. A hoard of his belongings - over 2,000 pieces - are auctioned off at Sotheby's in London, bringing in $6.2 million. The giant boots he wore in the film Tommy go for $20,000.

March 29, 1979 With their "Roxanne" money, The Police hit up Manny's Music in New York City, where they buy up much of the inventory. At their soundcheck that night at My Father's Place in Long Island, they start experimenting with the effects units and bass pedals that help define their sound moving forward.