Two played-and-smashed Kurt Cobain Strats sell for more than $150,000 at auction

Yesterday we reported on the three Eddie Van Halen guitars that sold for a combined total of $422,000 at Julien’s Icons & Idols Trilogy: Rock ‘n’ Roll auction.

But those were far from the only electric guitars from a big-name artist to garner big bucks at the event.

A cream-colored and signed Strat, played and smashed by Kurt Cobain in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 30, 1992, sold for $153,600.

The MIJ Strat was signed by Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in black marker, while drummer Dave Grohl wrote an entire poem on the guitar within a heart-shaped bubble that reads: “Hello. My name is Dave. I like Rave. It’ll drive me to my grave. But I’m not dumb. I play drums with two green thumbs and a sour plumb that makes the roof of my mouth numb. David.”

The Strat is missing strings and hardware and is in two main pieces, with two more additional small pieces that came off during the breakage included.

In addition, Cobain’s stage-played and smashed black Fender Strat, used on Nirvana’s 1994 In Utero tour and gifted by Cobain to an audience member after the performance at the Palais Omnisport de Rennes in Rennes, France, sold for $128,000.

The original estimate for the cream Strat was $40,000 - $60,000, while the black Strat was expected to sell for somewhere in the range of $60,000 - $80,000.

In addition to Cobain and Van Halen, the Icons & Idols Trilogy: Rock ‘n’ Roll auction also played host to the sale of Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys Octavia pedal, which sold for $70,400.