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A recently discovered guitar that John Lennon used to record multiple Beatles songs in the 1960s before it went missing for 50 years has sold at auction for $2.9 million, becoming one of the most valuable pieces of memorabilia from the band.<\/p>\n
The 12-string acoustic guitar, called the Hootenanny, was believed to be lost after Mr. Lennon and his bandmate George Harrison used it to record the 1965 Beatles albums \u201cRubber Soul\u201d and \u201cHelp!\u201d and the soundtrack to the band\u2019s film of the same name, said Julien\u2019s Auctions, the Los Angeles-based auction house that handled the sale on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Later that year, Mr. Lennon gifted the 1964 guitar, made by the German instrument manufacturer Framus, to Gordon Waller, a member of the British pop duo Peter & Gordon. Mr. Waller passed it on to one of his road managers, who took the guitar to his home in the rural British countryside and tossed it in the attic, the auction house said<\/a>.<\/p>\n More than 50 years later, a man in Britain discovered the guitar in his parents\u2019 attic as they were moving out of the house, Darren Julien, a co-founder of Julien Auctions, said in a video<\/a>. After they found it \u2014 along with its original guitar case \u2014 they alerted the auction house in March, Mr. Julien said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe son told us that he had always heard his dad talk about this guitar, but he\u2019d believed that it was lost,\u201d said Martin Nolan, another co-founder of Julien\u2019s Auctions, in the video.<\/p>\n The auction house consulted with Andy Babiuk, a Beatles expert who has authenticated the band\u2019s memorabilia in the past, to verify the guitar. After comparing the instrument\u2019s wood grain and the wear patterns to those in archival images, Mr. Babiuk determined that the guitar was the one played by Mr. Lennon, the auction house said<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cCheck your attic, folks,\u201d Mr. Nolan said.<\/p>\n Other famous instruments have turned up after being lost for more than five decades. Paul McCartney\u2019s H\u00f6fner violin bass<\/a> was found last year. Mr. Lennon\u2019s Gibson acoustic guitar<\/a>, which had also been forgotten, was sold for $2.4 million to an anonymous buyer in 2015.<\/p>\n After half a century in the attic, Mr. Lennon\u2019s Hootenanny was in need of some restoration. Ryan Schuermann, a repairman in Los Angeles, conducted a complicated process<\/a> involving removing its neck and attaching it back to the body at a better angle.<\/p>\n The guitar, which features a spruce top, mahogany back and sides, a 19-fret rosewood fingerboard and a decorative sound hole rosette, was sold along with a Maton guitar case and a DVD boxed set for the movie \u201cHelp!\u201d and a collection of photographs from the set of the film.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The value of the guitar was estimated<\/a> at $600,000 to $800,000 before the auction. It was sold to an anonymous buyer for $2,857,500, becoming the fifth-most expensive guitar ever sold, the auction house said.<\/p>\n \u201cFinding this remarkable instrument is like finding a lost Rembrandt or Picasso,\u201d Mr. Julien added in a statement<\/a>, \u201cand it still looks and plays like a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n