A street sign from London’s world-famous Abbey Road has sold for £37,200 at auction.
The sign had been predicted to sell for between £1,000 and £2,000. The hammer price was £30,000, but the total came to over £37,000 with the addition of buyer’s premium and VAT.
It was one of 275 signs sold on behalf of Westminster City Council. The lots sold for a total of £143,517.
The signs were sold in a two-week timed online auction by Catherine Southon Auctioneers & Valuers, in Chislehurst, south east London.
As a south Londoner myself, the project of selling the London street signs has been enormous fun from start to finish, and an honour to be involved in.I have been absolutely flabbergasted by the interest in the auction and the competitive bidding from all over the world.
Many people have been bidding on the signs because they have a personal link to the street – either they worked there, lived there, or, in some instances, the signs just link to their name.
Whatever the reason, the signs are a wonderful way to connect to one of the most famous cities in the world.
3 Abbey Road is the location of the recording studios in which The Beatles recorded the majority of their music. It was originally a nine-bedroom house built in 1829, but was purchased in 1928 by the Gramophone Company and converted into the world-famous studio.
This is not the first time an Abbey Road street sign has been sold at auction. In December 1981 one sold at Sotheby’s in London for just £320.
Another sign, dating from May 1970, sold at Bonham’s in December 2013 for £10,625.