Pink Floyd guitar sold for record-breaking $14.6m

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A guitar famously played by David Gilmour on several Pink Floyd albums has been sold for an unprecedented $14.6 million (£10.9 million), setting a new record for the most expensive guitar ever auctioned, according to Christie’s auction house. Known as the ‘Black Strat,’ the 1969 Fender Stratocaster was used by Gilmour on every British rock band album released between 1970 and 1983, including iconic works such as *The Dark Side of the Moon*, *Wish You Were Here*, and *The Wall*.

The auction took place in New York, where the guitar was purchased by an anonymous bidder following a 21-minute bidding contest. Alongside this historic sale, a piano once owned by John Lennon of the Beatles also fetched a remarkable $3.2 million (£2.5 million), reportedly the highest amount ever paid for a piece of Beatles memorabilia. Christie’s had initially estimated the guitar’s value to be between $2 million and $4 million before the sale.

The auction featured memorabilia from the collection of Jim Irsay, a billionaire American businessman who passed away in 2025. Julien Pradels, president of Christie’s Americas, commented on the event, saying, “Lot after lot, we felt like we were making history. The Irsay sale did justice to the brilliance of the collector, and the monumental pieces he brought together—iconic objects that tell the story of our culture and our times.”

This sale eclipses the previous record-holder for the most expensive guitar, a 1959 Martin D-18E retro acoustic-electric guitar played by Kurt Cobain during Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance in 1993, which sold for $6 million (£4.5 million) in 2020. The auction also included another guitar owned by Cobain, a blue Fender Mustang featured in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video, which sold for $6.9 million (£5.3 million). In total, the sale of items from Irsay’s collection, which comprised 44 pieces, generated $84 million (£64 million)

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