Sotheby is betting on pop culture, and it sells for $2. Eddievan Halen Guitar
In October, Sotheby’s will auction one of the most well-known instruments in rock history: Eddie Van Halen’s 1982 Cramer guitar. The instrument, estimated at $2 million to $3 million, will be inaugurated in New York with the title of “Grails Week”, a new sales series designed to place Sotheby’s in the center of the Populture Collectibles Boom.
Guitars are more than souvenirs. It accompanied the guitarist on stages in Philadelphia, Caracas, St. Paul and Buenos Aires. After years of extensive use, it was gifted to Van Halen’s guitar technicians and later sold it to Mick Mars of Mötley Crüe. Mars recorded part of the band’s 1989 album Dr. Feelgood Please retire on the guitar before viewing it from the guitar. The tool has not been seen publicly for more than 40 years.
Visually, the guitar is almost as compelling as the sound it makes. Spraying on Van Halen’s trademark red, black and white abstract stripes is an improvement on his famous “Frankenstein” design, a mix of fenders and Gibson parts that helped him develop what he called “brown sound.” Van Halen’s forced patching, the width of the nut and the body profile turned it into a functional design as well as a concert tool.
The auction forms the core of Sotheby’s new Grails Week, an annual series focusing on cultural trophysical draws from music, movies, TV and comics. The event will also feature Bob Dylan’s original work lyrics Underground country bluethe original of the Rolling Stones Just rock Album cover artwork and the Beatles used in studio conferences in the 1960s.
This kind of sales is a strategy. Fine Art Auctions have been tagging: In the first half of 2025, sales of Christie, Sotheby’s and Phillips fell 44% compared to the same period in 2022. The contraction is worth about $3 billion, forcing auction houses to work harder to lean towards luxury and pop culture categories. Last month in Paris, a abused Hermes Birkin bag owned by Jane Birkin set a $10 million auction record for the handbag. Christie’s equities in the first half of 2025 were simply due to a 30% increase in luxury sales, which reached $468 million, or 22% of its total turnover. Arttactic estimates that luxury goods now account for more than one-fifth of the value of major homes, a record share.
For Sotheby’s, which created a popular cultural sector earlier this year, Grails Week aims to solidify its presence in this ever-expanding niche. How the head of Sotheby’s luxury Joshua Pullan describes Van Halen’s guitar. The house has sold Ferris Bueller’s sweater vest and other movie debris to exaggerate the words.
