Christie’s announced Friday that it will sell more than 130 items, including 90 guitars, from the collection of the Yardbirds and Jeff Beck Group guitarist who died in January 2023 at the age of 78.

Valued at over £1 million, the collection includes an oxblood 1954 Gibson Les Paul which Beck bought in Memphis in 1972 and played for the rest of the decade. The guitar, which is featured on the cover of Beck’s Grammy-winning 1975 jazz-fusion album “Blow by Blow”, is expected to sell for between £350,000 and £500,000.

Amelia Walker, head of private and prestigious collections at Christie’s, called it “a really beautiful instrument, covered with dirt and dust and signs of use”.

“I think that’s part of the appeal,” she said. “These are the things they used. They found his fingernail marks on the fret board. The strings of some of them have not been changed for years. He played them very well. He didn’t see them as valuable works of art – they were tools of his trade.

Beck came to prominence in the 1960s with hard-rock progenitors the Yardbirds and went on to a solo career that included rock, jazz, blues, and even opera. Twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – with the Yardbirds and as a solo artist – he played with everyone from Rod Stewart to Dewey Bowie, Stevie Wonder and Tina Turner, and is known for his improvisational skills and unique sound. Was known for. Got his favorite guitar, a Fender Stratocaster, from the Whammy Bar.

Walker said, “he had the unique ability to bend entire notes” on the Strat. The sale includes Beck’s 1954 sunburst Fender Stratocaster, valued at between £50,000 and £80,000, and a white Strat that was his main instrument for 16 years, played everywhere from Ronnie Scott’s jazz club to the Obama White House Used to go. Its estimated value is between £20,000 and £30,000.

One of a group of guitar heroes of the 1960s that included Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, Beck was revered by many peers as “the ultimate player,” Walker said.

As well as Beck’s beloved Strats, the sale also included other models, including the Telecaster-Gibson hybrid “Tele-Gib”, priced between £100,000 and £150,000.

Walker said, “No matter what he was playing, he always sounded like Jeff Beck.” “It didn’t matter which way the amp was turned or which guitar, he could still pick it up and make it sound incredible. It’s all in the fingers and in his mind.

The sale follows Christie’s auction of some of Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler’s collection, which raised more than £8.8 million earlier this year, and memorabilia of model, artist and 1960s musician inspiration Pattie Boyd. The items, which sold for £2.8 million in March.

Beck’s widow, Sandra Beck, said it was a “huge wrench” to part with the collection, but “I know Jeff would have wanted me to share this love.”

“After some hard thinking I decided they needed to share, play and love again,” she said.

A selection of guitars will be displayed at Christie’s Los Angeles showroom on December 4-6, and the entire collection will be at Christie’s in London from January 15 until the sale on January 22.

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