US: A Texas bookshop owner bought a rare page of working lyrics for Beatle Paul McCartney's song Maxwell's Silver Hammer for $192,000 at an auction of rock and pop memorabilia at Christie's in New York on Monday.
Bill Butler also won the bidding for one of rock legend Jimi Hendrix's electric guitars - a 1968 Fender Stratocaster - for $168,000, the guitar's strap for $10,800 and a photograph of Hendrix and band members Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell framed by two topless blondes for $5,400.
"I'm worried about getting it all home," Butler joked after the auction. Butler retired from the telecommunications industry before opening his rare and used bookshop in Rosenberg, Texas, just outside Houston. He said he would display the guitar at his bookstore but would keep the 1968 McCartney lyrics in a fireproof filing cabinet.
Butler lost the bidding for a black leather waistcoat worn on stage by Hendrix. It was bought for $28,800 by Don Bernstine, who acquires rock memorabilia for the Hard Rock cafes, hotels and casinos.
Other big sellers included a notebook containing handwritten lyrics by reggae star Bob Marley, which went for $72,000, and a handwritten poem by Doors singer Jim Morrison, The American Night, which was sold for $50,400. Both went to private collectors in the United States. Prices included buyers' premiums.
Christie's took in a total of $1,117,920 from people who placed bids in person, by phone and over the internet. A review of Sophocles's Antigone, written as a high school assignment by Britney Spears, fetched only $250 to much laughter and applause from bidders.