The 10 most expensive musical instruments ever auctioned

Two very different markets share this list. One is three centuries old, runs on written provenance and dendrochronology, and revolves around a few hundred surviving instruments from Cremona. The other is about sixty years old and revolves around what can be seen and heard on a recording. In March 2026 the second market caught up with the first in a single evening.

Each figure below is the price as reported at the time of sale, with the house and the date, so it can be checked.

1. The "Lady Blunt" Stradivarius — $15.9 million

Sold online by Tarisio on 20 June 2011 for £9,808,000, more than four times the previous auction record for a Stradivari. Made in 1721 and named after Lord Byron's granddaughter, who owned it for thirty years, it is among the best-preserved violins of its age precisely because so little of its life was spent being played. The Nippon Music Foundation offered it after the earthquake and tsunami of March that year and gave the entire proceeds to the relief fund.

2. The "da Vinci, ex-Seidel" Stradivarius — $15.34 million

Tarisio again, 9 June 2022. Made around 1714, in Stradivari's so-called golden period. It belonged to Toscha Seidel, who took it to Hollywood, which means it is the violin heard on the soundtracks of The Wizard of Oz and Intermezzo. Its price is the second highest ever paid for a Stradivari at auction.

3. David Gilmour's "Black Strat" — $14,550,000

Christie's, New York, 12 March 2026, at the sale of the Jim Irsay Collection, after twenty-one minutes of bidding. It is the most expensive guitar ever sold. Gilmour used it to record The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall. Irsay had bought it at Christie's in 2019 for $3,975,000, itself a record at the time, at a sale in which Gilmour gave more than twenty-one million dollars to an environmental charity.

4. Jerry Garcia's "Tiger" — $11,560,000

The same evening in New York. Tiger was built for Garcia by the luthier Doug Irwin, commissioned in 1973 and finished in 1979, and was his main instrument for the next decade. It was the last guitar he played live. Its price is the second highest ever paid for a guitar, and it was set roughly forty minutes after the record it beat.

5. The "Joachim-Ma" Stradivarius — $11,250,000

Sotheby's, New York, 7 February 2025, after a short performance on the instrument in the saleroom. Made in 1714 and played by the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, later owned by Si-Hon Ma. The estimate was twelve to eighteen million dollars, so this is one of the few entries here that fell short of what was asked. The money funds scholarships at the New England Conservatory.

6. Kurt Cobain's 1969 Fender Competition Mustang — $6,907,000

Christie's, New York, March 2026. This is the guitar in the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit, acquired shortly before filming. It was not used on Nevermind, but it went out on tour and turned up again during the In Utero sessions.

7. Kurt Cobain's 1959 Martin D-18E — $6,010,000

Julien's Auctions, Beverly Hills, 20 June 2020. Cobain played this acoustic on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in 1993, five months before he died. It held the record for the most expensive guitar sold at auction for almost six years. The lot included the case, some strings, three picks and three lapel pins in a velvet pouch.

8. The "Molitor" Stradivarius — $3.6 million

Tarisio, October 2010, against a low estimate of two million dollars. Made in 1697 and thought to have belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte, it later passed through the Curtis Institute of Music. It was bought after heavy bidding by the American violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, who plays it. That single sale made the October 2010 auction the highest grossing instrument sale held to that date.

9. The "Hammer" Stradivarius — $3.54 million

Christie's, 16 May 2006, against an estimate of one and a half to two and a half million dollars. Made in 1707 and named after a nineteenth-century Swedish collector who is its first recorded owner. When it sold it set the auction record for any instrument; twenty years later it does not reach the top half of this list.

10. "The Fool" SG — about $3 million

Christie's, New York, March 2026. A 1964 Gibson SG Standard, painted in 1967 by two Dutch artists at Eric Clapton's request, and played by him with Cream. Clapton passed it to George Harrison, Harrison to Jackie Lomax, and Lomax sold it to Todd Rundgren for five hundred dollars. Rundgren played it through the seventies and sold it in 2000.

What sets these prices

Almost none of it is the object. A modified 1969 Fender Stratocaster with an eighties neck is worth a few thousand dollars as a guitar. The Black Strat made fourteen and a half million because of four albums, and because there is footage and there are photographs proving it was the instrument on them. Tiger, the Mustang, the Martin: all the same. On the other side of the list, the violins carry written ownership chains going back two hundred years, tested against the wood itself.

In other words, both halves of this list are selling documentation. The instrument is the evidence's carrier. Where the documentation is thin the price collapses, and where it is complete the price has no obvious ceiling.

What that means for a much smaller sale

You are not selling a Stradivari, but you are selling the same thing: a story a bidder can believe. The single cheapest improvement available to any organiser is to write down, for each lot, who gave it, why, and one verifiable fact about it. A signed line from the donor. A photograph of the object with the person who owned it. The date it was made. Three honest sentences beat a better photograph, and they cost nothing. There is more on writing lot entries in the guide, and on handling donated art and collectables on the page for art auctions.

The second point is that the same object sells for different sums in different rooms. The Black Strat made 3.975 million dollars in 2019 and 14.55 million in 2026, unchanged in between. The Hammer Stradivarius held the world record in 2006 at a price that would now place it ninth. Nothing about either object improved. What changed was who happened to be in the room and what they had already decided to spend. That is worth remembering when a lot goes for less than you hoped: it is not a verdict on the lot.

The third is timing. Tiger and the Black Strat set records within an hour of each other, because a room that has just watched something extraordinary bids differently on the next lot. Order matters more than most committees think, and a lot that closes on a fixed second cuts off exactly the bidder who was still deciding. How lots close, extend and finish is covered on the how it works page.

Three of the sales above — the Lady Blunt, the Joachim-Ma and Gilmour's 2019 auction — existed to raise money for a cause. You can build a lot list and rehearse a full evening before committing to anything at getting started, and the help centre covers the practical questions.

Prices as reported at the time of sale; figures include buyer's premium where stated.