Lennon lyrics - all you need is money …

John Lennon Lyrics A day in the Life,
originally uploaded by Christopher Proudlove.

There is something inherently sad about the sale of John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to the Beatles classic A Day in The Life. I was at the Sotheby's sale in London in 1992 when they sold to an anonymous private collector for £56,500.

They were sold then by the widow of Beatles roadie Big Mal Evans, the Liverpool Post Office telecoms engineer who quit his job to travel the world with the Fab Four, leaving his wife to bring up two children on her own.

Mal was devoted to the group and was very much the unsung hero, receiving little reward for his devotion. But he had his memories. He appeared in the films Help!, Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be and even played on some of their albums, notably one of the pianos on A Day in the Life and the hammer sound effects on Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.

When things went bad at Apple, Mal, by now estranged from his family, moved to Los Angeles and fell in with a woman and her four-year-old daughter. Depression over the lack of direction in his life got the better of him and one day he locked himself in the bathroom with an air pistol.

The woman called the police and when they burst into the room and saw the weapon, they fired six shots killing him instantly.

One of Mal's duties as the Beatles’ personal assistant was to clean up after them and the lyrics were among a number of mementos which Mal had saved from his days on the road with them. The money they raised came in very handy for Mrs Evans.

The decision to hold this new sale in New York is understandable: Lennon has a big following there and there is no shortage of money. But a sealed-bid auction is a weird tactic.

Predictions of £1 million sale seem ambitious without the razzmatazz of at public auction. Bidding ends on March 7 and it will be interesting to learn of the outcome – if we ever do.

Sneaky schoolgirl’s signed Beatles picture set to sell for £2,000

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As a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Lynne Peters couldn't believe her luck when a backstage helper sneaked her and her sister into the back of the theatre to watch The Beatles play live on stage.

When he came back after the show with a photograph signed by each of the Fab Four, she was ecstatic and the photograph -- a page from the girls' comic "Boyfriend" -- was given pride of place in her bedroom.

The year was 1963 and Beatlemania was sweeping the country, but John Paul George and Ringo were still coming to terms with their new-found fame. So unaccustomed was he to signing autographs, Ringo started to write Richard Starkey, but hurriedly crossed it out to replace it with his stage name.

Now, more than 40 years later, that autographed page is valuable. When Chester auctioneers Byrne's sell it on Wednesday, December 7, they expect a clamour from collectors of Beatles memorabilia and a selling price of £2,000-3,000, possibly more.

Mrs Peters, now a 56-year-old Chester housewife, said she was amazed that the picture was so valuable. Recalling the mild spring evening when her father took her and her younger sister, Denise, ticketless, to see The Beatles, she said that at first they were among a huge crowd of fans milling about outside the Royalty Theatre, in City Road, Chester, where the group was topping the bill.

"Someone spotted the boys in the Chinese restaurant opposite the theatre,” she said. “Chaos erupted and we were part of a wave of screaming, ecstatic fans, trying to get to them. The boys were mobbed as they tried to get back to the theatre as the fans and surged back and forth, hoping to touch them.

"Somehow, they got back inside the theatre in one piece to begin what was to become an unforgettable early Beatles show for me. My father knew one of the backstage helpers who said he would be able to get as tickets. But it was a sell-out and so we had to wait in the foyer while everyone filed past is to take their seats. But the helper said he'd get us in and he sneaked us through the doors on the balcony and told us to stand at the back. It didn't matter that we didn't have seats, because everyone was on their feet throughout the concert.

"The curtains rose to the opening bars of "Please Please Me" and brought an electrified wave of shouting, screaming, ecstatic, mainly teenage fans to the front of the balcony. Numbers such as "Love Me Do", "When I Saw Her Standing There" and many others were the prelude to a grand finale where the boys brought the house down belting out the unforgettable "She Loves You". Coming back on stage several times to pay tribute to us adoring fans, The Beatles brought the curtain down on an evening forever emblazoned on my memory.

"Before he left us, I'd given the stagehand the page from my comic, which my dad had pasted onto a piece of hardboard, and I asked him to try to get me their autographs. When my dad picked us up outside the theatre, the stagehand came out and I couldn't believe it, they'd all signed it. I took it to school to show my friends and it was then I realised that Ringo had started off by signing it Richard Starkey, but then he had crossed it out.

"I've treasured it ever since but lately it's been kept in a wardrobe wrapped up carefully to protect it, so I decided that now is the time to sell it and let someone else from a younger generation enjoy it as I have."

Byrne's annual pre-Christmas sale includes antique furniture, fine jewellery, silver, ceramics, objets d'art, pictures and collectors' ceramics, notably a good single-owner collection of Clarice Cliff, militaria, toys and dolls and other collectables.

The sale starts at 11am and is on view on Sunday December 4 from 10am to 3pm; on Monday and Tuesday December 25 and 6 from 9am to 5pm and on the morning of the sale from 9am. Catalogues, price £6 (including postage) are available from the auctioneers and can be viewed online at www.byrnesauctioneers.co.uk.

Byrne’s fine art auctioneers, the North West’s most dynamic auction
house, was founded by Jo Boucher and Adrian Byrne, formerly of Hall’s
auctioneers, Shrewsbury. Byrne’s conducts 20 sales a year from a
prestigious listed mansion house in Chester’s Watergate Street, the
former location of Sotheby’s North West regional saleroom, and latterly
a Hall’s saleroom which Jo and Adrian took over in 2003.

More information from Byrne's on 01244 312300.

Name dropping: Collecting celebrity autographs

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by Christopher Proudlove©

I have not yet reached that stage yet where people stop me and ask me for my autograph. It's just a matter of time! But no, seriously, we know several people who are autograph hunters, and one who makes a living out of the hobby.

You will find him at collectors' fairs in the North West of England selling photographs of the rich and famous (and infamous) each suitably inscribed by the individual and complete with moniker.

However, I thought I'd write about autograph collecting this week because word reaches me of an amazing single-owner collection of the things coming up for sale today and tomorrow (May 24 & 25).

More than 4,000 signatures will be offered in 1,400 lots, representing a lifetime's collection of a man whose father started him off in the hobby when the man was a child.

Actually, the story is tinged with a little sadness. The boy was born with a severe medical problem which confined him to his home. However, that didn't stop the boy following events in the outside world and he knew all about who was in the news and why.

Realising his son's interest in current affairs, the father put pen to paper and wrote to each of them in turn explaining his son's circumstances and asking, politely for a signed photo. People being what they are, they responded generously, with the result that very quickly, the boy's collection started to blossom.

As he got older, the young man started writing on his own account and the collection positively mushroomed. Now heading towards old age, the collector has decided the time has come to give other collectors a taste of the pleasure the collection has brought to him and he's decided to auction the lot.

Cataloguing the mass of signed photos collected over a period of 50 years proved to be a nightmare for the auctioneers. Two catalogue have spent three months going through them painstakingly, ensuring that the signatures are indeed by the individual's own hand, and not produced photo-mechanically (not an easy task in itself) and deciding how the collection should be split and categorised and what the estimates should be on each lot.

Interestingly, on the rare occasions that they found a photo-mechanical signature, the cataloguers also found an identical photo also signed and usually with an inscription in the celebrity's own handwriting.

The explanation of this is that when the father or his son received the former, they would write back and politely request that it be replaced by one of the latter!

It is hard to imagine another opportunity to start your own autograph collection presenting itself like this in the foreseeable future. On offer is a unique group of signed portraits that have never before seen the light of day outside the man's home, and have never before been traded on the open market.

The collection represents a glittering panoply of personalities from the 1940s onwards ranging from Groucho Marx to the Beatles.

For the collector with a vivid imagination, autographs can be so appealing. No other collection gives its owner such a feeling of direct contact with figures from history.

Surprisingly, though, autographs must be among the most undervalued of all areas of collecting. Perhaps it's psychological, after all, autograph hunting costs nothing.

Depressing number of forgeries

Another factor that depresses prices is the number of forgeries, and, in more recent times at least, photographic facsimile signatures that can cost an unwary newcomer to the hobby dearly. Easiest solution is to buy only from reputable sources: either dealers with reputations at stake, or auction houses who guarantee what they sell.

Except that takes some of the fun out of the game of buying on you own expertise. Exercise some caution, do plenty of detective work on the celebrity whose signature it is you seek and learn to spot the difference between an actual autograph and a mechanically produced one and you won't go far wrong.

Forgeries are obviously produced in such ways as to deceive, so you need to be particularly on your guard. One of the best ways of spotting a fake is the absence of light and shade in a signature, or, put another way, heavy pressure and light pressure on the part of the writer.

Also, be wary if the signature is written and positioned too perfectly on a page. By their nature, signatures are swift, almost casual, forms of self-expression. Few people, kings or commoners, politicians or personalities give them a second thought.

Suspicion should also surround any document signed by a personality, particularly letters, the content of which is too outrageous to be true.

For instance, a friend once had the bright idea of sending to Maggie Thatcher a copy of the cartoon-like caricature of herself that appeared as a centrefold in Punch magazine (I think it was).

The caricature was in the style of the Oriental style paintings of women you used to see for sale in Boots and other high street stores. He enclosed a note to Mrs T asking her to sign and return it, which she duly did. He now owns something of unique value.

On the other hand, a letter to Tony Blair signed by Malcolm Howard saying how much he admires him politically and how he voted for him in the recent election should be mistrusted!

Nowhere is the fake/facsimile signature problem more pronounced than in the field of pop memorabilia, particularly for collectors of Beatles signatures.
Going price for a set Beatles signatures is about £1,800-2,000 at auction George and Ringo each make around £200-400, while John and Paul are more valuable at £400-600 each. Easy money for the copyists.

Interestingly, the sale includes a very early promotional photograph of the group, taken at a time when Pete Best was drummer.

However, by the time the Fab Four got round to signing it, Pete had been sacked and replaced by Ringo, whose signature appears alongside the other three on the reverse. Its uniqueness takes its value to £2,500-3,500.

The aptly named Paper Chase Sale, which also includes books and stamps, is at Liverpool auctioneers Outhwaite & Litherland, Kingsway Galleries, Fontenoy Street.

• "Philography" as collecting autographs is called is arguably one of the cheapest hobbies of all.

• Like the person whose collection is being sold this week - and my friend who wrote to Mrs T - it's often possible to collect autographs celebrities for the price of a couple of stamps.

• Send them a politely worded letter and famous individuals know that to maintain their popularity, they need to respond to such requests from their fans.

• Stars can often be contacted by writing to their production company or agent; sporting personalities often belong to well known clubs and musicians can be contacted by writing to their record company.

• And remember to always enclose a stamped addressed envelope.

Pictures show, top: An early Beatles promo picture featuring Pete Best but signed on the reverse by replacement Ringo Starr. Today a real rarity, it's worth £2,500-3,500

Below, clockwise from left: An autographed studio portrait of actress Bette Davis
Estimate £600-800

A colour photograph of President Ronald Regan and wife Nancy who both autographed the reverse
Estimate £200-300

Buzz Aldrin the Apollo 11 lunar pilot who made the first landing on the Moon July 26 1969 autographed this colour photograph
Estimate £40-60

An early autographed studio photograph of Bob Hope
Estimate £40-60