A Jim Dunlop guitar pick used by Kurt Cobain during Nirvana’s iconic MTV Unplugged show is being raffled off for charity.
The orange .60mm pick shows clear wear from where Cobain’s thumb started to rub off a little of the ink. At £5 (approx. $6.74) a pop for a raffle entry, this is perhaps the cheapest way fans can potentially come to own a fragment of the grunge icon’s history.
“Ever dreamed of owning a piece of Nirvana’s legacy?” a post on the Royal College of Music (RCM) Instagram asks. “Now’s your chance.” All proceeds from the prize draw directly support students and the Future Music Fund at the RCM.
Some readers may look at the pick nestling in its black-rimmed frame as a fairly unremarkable museum piece. But perspective can change things.
After all, a guitar pick that Cobain is believed to have used to track Nevermind demos sold for a staggering $14,678 in 2023. It too an orange Dunlop pick, that plectrum features his joke 'Kurdt Kobain' signature on one side – which he also scrawled on a Boss DS-1 pedal that ultimately sold for $75,000 – and his attempt at drawing the Dunlop tortoise on the other.
The truth of the matter is that Cobain-owned gear carries a staggering mystique at auction. Indeed, the two most expensive guitars to ever sold at auction were his. There are notable other entries in the top 10, with David Gilmour's Black Strat and Eddie Van Halen's Hot For Teacher Kramer among them.
But even the $4 million the Gilmour Strat fetched at auction is dwarfed by the eye-watering $6 million that Cobain's Martin D-18E acoustic guitar – another star of the MTV Unplugged set – eventually sold for.
Interestingly, the RCM’s raffle prize pick was found inside the guitar case that housed the D-18E. It is currently on display at the Royal College of Music Museum, London, but won’t be much longer.
For the curious, Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit Fender Mustang claims second spot in the list. It sold for $4,550,000 in 2022.
Suddenly, £5 feels like a drop of the ocean. We crunched the numbers, and it amounts to just 0.035% of that whopping $14,000 outlay.
There is one Cobain-played guitar, however, that is not for sale. The 1953 Martin D-18 acoustic he affectionately named "Grandpa” was gifted to him by singer/songwriter Mary Lou Lord. That six-string now calls the Martin Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, its home.
Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt and Fredrik Åkesson recently played the guitar as their tour bus rolled through the state, and Åkerfeldt revealed another interesting tidbit about the acoustic.
“Someone told us that guitar was haunted, like people who had that guitar had accidents,” he said. No wonder it has no recognizable owner these days.
Guitar World believes the MTV Unplugged pick is not haunted, but some sage could always be bought with some of the leftover $13,995. Just to be sure.
The Royal College of Music Kurt Cobain Plectrum Prize Draw prize competition draw will be conducted on 18 November 2025.
Tickets can be bought from RCM.
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