In 1971, Bob Dylan played George Harrison and Ravi Shankar‘s Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden. During that famed concert, Dylan played his 1963 Martin D-28 acoustic guitar, which the legendary musician also used during his famed 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Over the weekend, the guitar sold at auction for $396,000—almost $100,000 more than its pre-auction estimate. However, this high price tag is not necessarily out of line, especially when considering that in 2013, the sunburst Fender Stratocaster Bob Dylan played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival broke records after selling for $965,000.
Dylan’s guitar was purchased from Heritage Auctions by an anonymous bidder. The guitar was put up for auction by Larry Cragg, Dylan’s former guitar repairman who purchased the instrument from the iconic rocker back in 1977 for $500 following Dylan’s decision that year to solely perform with Gibson guitars. In addition to the guitar itself, a copy of Cragg’s receipt for the Martin was also included in the sale.
As Heritage Auctions described ahead of the item’s sale, “According to Cragg, he has kept the guitar in a humidity-controlled environment, with loosened strings for the forty years it’s been in his possession, and it has not been played since it was wielded by Bob Dylan in 1977.”
You can check out a video about Bob Dylan’s historic 1963 Martin D-28 acoustic below, courtesy of Heritage Auctions.
In 2013, Dylan’s sunburst Fender Stratocaster from the 1965 Newport Folk Festival sold at auction for a then-record $965,000.
[H/T Rolling Stone]