Rare, Unseen Beatles Photos From First U.S. Show Sell for $360,000

A batch of rare, unseen photos of The Beatles' first U.S. concert sold at auction recently for more than $360,000.

Fifty silver gelatin prints from the band's Washington Coliseum show on February 11, 1964, were sold individually at Christie's auction house in New York. The images had originally only been estimated to fetch a total of just $100,000.

The photos were shot my photographer Mike Mitchell, just two days after the band's debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. Mitchell was 18 at the time.

One of the highlights included a backlit photograph of Ringo Starr, which sold for $8,125 dollars. The shot captured Starr while singing on The Beatles classic "I Wanna Be Your Man."

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Josh Hart

Josh Hart is a former web producer and staff writer for Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado magazines (2010–2012). He has since pursued writing fiction under various pseudonyms while exploring the technical underpinnings of journalism, now serving as a senior software engineer for The Seattle Times.