David Gilmour's Guitars Sell for Nearly $30 Million

His famed black Strat alone went for over $4 million

BY Brock ThiessenPublished Jun 21, 2019

Pink Floyd legend David Gilmour has auctioned off a collection of guitars for a seriously jaw-dropping amount of money. And we're not just talking thousands of dollars here — but nearly $30 million.

On Thursday (June 20), Gilmour auctioned off more than 120 of his instruments for charity, making for what's considered to be auction house Christie's largest and most comprehensive sale of its kind. In total, the auction brought in $21.5 million USD — that's about $28 million CAD.

While lots of the guitars fetched a pretty penny, the highest selling item was his beloved 1969 black Fender Stratocaster, which was used on every Pink Floyd album from The Dark Side of the Moon until The Final Cut. That six-string sold for an incredible $3,975,000 USD — well above the estimated range of $100,000 to $150,000.

A 1954 Fender Stratocaster, meanwhile, with the serial number 0001 that was used on the recording of "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" sold for more than $1.8 million.

Gilmour's acoustic Martin D-35 also sold for just over $1 million USD. That acoustic was used as his main guitar on both his solo material and on such Floyd classics as Wish You Were Here and The Dark Side of the Moon.

To give you a bit of price comparison, Christie's previous record for a Martin guitar was held by Eric Clapton, whose 1939 OO0-42 sold for $791,500 USD. All the money raised from the auction will go to the climate change charity ClimateEarth

"These guitars have been very good to me," Gilmour told Rolling Stone earlier this year. "They're my friends. They have given me lots of music. I just think it's time that they went off and served someone else. I have had my time with them. And of course the money that they will raise will do an enormous amount of good in the world, and that is my intention."

Speaking specifically of the famed black Strat, Gilmour said the following:

You know something? For me, I can let go of it. It's going to bring a lot of people to have a look at this sale, and it's going to do that job. It's a lovely guitar. It has been on pretty much all the Pink Floyd albums through the '70s. It's on Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall. I did my "Comfortably Numb" solo on it. The notes for the beginning of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" fell out of it one day. It's on so much stuff, but Fender have made replica ones that they sell, and I have two or three of those that are absolutely perfect. One of those might be my future guitar of choice or even, horror of horror, maybe I'll even change the colour.
 

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