An instrument that once belonged to a Beatle is the kind of thing you’d expect to see at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland or Abbey Road Studios in London. On Saturday, however, a piano that had once been owned by John Lennon was on York Road in Towson, where Alex Cooper Auctioneers hoped to bring in a seven-figure sum for the instrument.
The auction of the piano was announced in July, with the auction house telling The Baltimore Banner that bidding would open at $1 million and that it was estimated to go for as much as two or three times that amount.
When auctioneer Paul Cooper arrived at the item he called “the star of our show” on Saturday afternoon, however, he asked for an opening bid of $310,000. As staffers and attendees looked around expectantly, a surprising silence descended upon the room. None of the individuals who had bid on other items held up their paddle. A staffer at a computer, monitoring online bids, reported none was incoming.
Alex Cooper Auctioneers announced it would continue accepting post-auction offers on the Lennon piano, Lot No. 1099, through Oct. 4 at noon. And, with that anticlimactic moment over, they opened bidding on a series of Persian rugs less than five minutes after the storied Lennon piano’s auction had begun.
The Baldwin concert grand piano was built in 1929, and Lennon bought it in Baldwin’s Manhattan showroom in 1978. A year later, the former Beatle and his wife, Yoko Ono, gave the piano to their friend Samuel Adams Green, an art dealer closely associated with Andy Warhol and the pop art movement.
The brass plaque on the piano still bears their dedication, “For Sam, Love From Yoko and John, 1979.”
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