The Wikicollecting Top 10 Most Expensive Jimi Hendrix Memorabilia To commemorate the death of one of rock and roll's most pioneering and explosive guitarists, Wikicollecting.org presents the Top 10 most expensive items of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia ever sold.
This 1968 Fender Strat was used by Jimi in the studio between 1969 and 1970, as he favoured the studio sound that guitars with rosewood necks offered (although he preferred maple neck guitars for use on stage).
The Sunburst finish guitar was discovered in his London studio shortly after his death in September 1970, and later sold to a friend of the band.
It spent 10 years as an exhibit at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland, before being sold during a Christie’s auction in 2006 for a price of $168,000.
The second of Jimi’s Sunburst Strats was a 1970 model, serial number 274200, which he bought at the celebrated Manny’s Music Store in New York on July 14, 1970. Hendrix later played the guitar at the opening party for his Electric Lady Studios in August 1970, just one month before he was found dead.
The guitar was sold with the original Manny’s receipt, along with an authentication from Jimi’s former band mate Noel Redding, at the Julien’s ‘Music Icons’ auction at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. It beat its estimate of $150,000 to sell for $180,000.
3) Jimi’s Red Fender Mustang guitar - $480,000
The only non-Stratocaster to appear on the list is a 1966 Red Fender Mustang which Jimi used during the recording of both Axis Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland.
It later appeared at the 2007 Music Rising "Icons of Music" charity auction in New York, which was organized to raise money for musicians who lost their equipment during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
It became the third most expensive of all Jimi’s guitars when it sold for $480,000.
Jimi’s 1965 Fender Stratocaster was the first to be sacrificed to the spirits of rock and roll in 1967. At the end of a performance at the Finsbury Astoria in North London Jimi covered the guitar in lighter fluid and set it alight, sending roadies rushing to put out the fire and burning his own hand in the process.
This became a trademark of many of his shows, but the first guitar to get the fiery treatment ended up in the hands of Jimi’s press officer Tony Garland.
Forty years later garland’s nephew discovered the guitar still intact, and it was sold during a Fame Bureau auction in London in 2008 for a price of £280,000.
1) Jimi’s Woodstock white Fender Stratocaster - $1.3 million
There’s nothing that isn’t iconic about the white Fender Stratocaster Jimi played at Woodstock. The festival itself featured the cream of 1960s rock and roll, and represented the vibrant energy of the decade through its ‘three days of peace and music’.
And perhaps the defining moment of the festival, and
