Careful With That Axe

Preparing David Gilmour’s Guitar Collection For Auction Is A Daunting Task, Not Just Because Of The Iconic Nature Of The Instruments – But Because Some Are Incredibly Rare Vintage Pieces In Their Own Right. How Do You Put A Value On All That? We Join Christie’s Guitar Expert, Kerry Keane, To Find Out

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What’s your background in preparing rare guitars for auction?

“I am the international consultant for musical instruments for Christie’s. Prior to my working in this capacity, I ran Christie’s’ musical instrument department for about 14 or 15 years. People always ask me, ‘How did you get into this? Where’d you learn your expertise?’ And my pat answer has always been: ‘I have a pony tail and a Volkswagen bus and it all went downhill from there…’ I was a guitarist, a pimply faced teenaged guitar player in the United States, and I cajoled a position by a lot of phone calls and showing up into a guitar-maker’s workshop where I worked for two years and then from there went off to violin-making school and sort of got sucked into the violin world. But I always had a great passion for guitar and still play it to this day. A bit of a speckled past, but I wound up at Christie’s and started there back in 1999.”

What’s the process of evaluation like when you receive guitars like David Gilmour’s for auction? How do you put a value on them?

“I’m a believer in that no matter what object you’re looking at, there are some key determinants of value. And the first one is attributions. So you have to settle: who made it? And when was it made? And that’s just looking at the instrument, the guitar, as an object. Is it a 1954 Stratocaster or is it a 1974 Stratocaster? All of which is going to yield different attributes and certainly different value levels.