Out of over 350,000 species of beetles on Earth, only one Beatle stored millions of dollars worth of rare Beatles memorabilia inside self-storage units: Ringo Starr. And if you have tons of money to spare, you too can own a piece of Beatlemania history.
How?
By bidding on over 800 relics from Ringo Starr and his wife Barbara at the Property from The Collection of Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach auction from December 4th to 5th in Beverly Hills, California.
“It started with me looking at storage units we have all around the world it seems. … We found we had so much stuff,” Ringo told the Associated Press over the phone from his apartment in London.
That stuff happens to include a guitar from John Lennon that’s estimated to fetch up to $800,000. There’s also Ringo Starr’s first 1963 Ludwig Oyster Black Pearl three-piece drum kit that he not only played in over 200 performances between 1963 and 1964, but also used to record some of The Beatles biggest hits such as “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “All My Loving,” “She Loves You,” and “I Wanna Be Your Man.”
“A lot of it we haven’t seen in 20 to 30 years,” Ringo told the AP. In fact, while working on his book Photograph, which Rolling Stone says “features charming shots of the Beatles lounging and goofing off,” Ringo unearthed boxes of negatives dating back to the 1960s.
“We thought, ‘What are we going to do with all this stuff?’” Ringo told the AP. “We’re fed up with having the stuff in storage when it could be put to some good use and also give a lot of people joy.”
That’s when Ringo and Barbara turned to Julien’s Auctions.
Gems of the historic rock and roll auction also include a 2000 Mercedes coupe that was first owned by George Harrison, some of Ringo’s stage-used drumsticks, a custom drum set that’s one of five to ever exist, and some of Ringo’s other percussion instruments like tambourines, bongos, and a hand drum signed by Harry Nilsson.
“It’s really a once in a lifetime opportunity. Ringo will never do this again. They are the only items he’s letting go,” said auctioneer Darren Julien. Which begs the question, what other treasures would Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach discover and auction if they Kondoed their self-storage units? The world may never know.
