A smashed guitar that belonged to the late Kurt Cobain has sold for $100,000.
As reported by Yahoo Music, the smashed Fender Mustang ― which was used by Cobain on Nirvana’s first U.S. tour ― was purchased by an unidentified collector. The seller was a punk guitarist named Sluggo (a member of the band The Grannies and Hullabaloo), who traded Cobain a working guitar for the damaged instrument at a time when the Nirvana frontman was living hand-to-mouth. Cobain had smashed the guitar on-stage and was looking for a replacement to play at the group’s next gig.
The $100,000 figure is thought to be the second-highest price ever paid for an item of Cobain memorabilia. In 2006, the late guitarist’s Mosrite Gospel Mark IV sold at auction for $131,000.
Sluggo had lent the smashed Mustang to Seattle’s Experience Music Project for several years. Jacob McMurray, senior curator for the Project, told Yahoo Music: “It’s a really cool-looking guitar because it’s smashed and held together with duct tape and Kurt Cobain wrote on it. There’s not a huge amount of broken Nirvana guitars out there.”