The acoustic guitar John Lennon was playing the day he met Paul McCartney sold at auction today for £40,000.
The historic meeting on 6 July, 1957 resulted in the 15 year old McCartney being asked to join Lennon's band, the Quarrymen, which eventually evolved into the Beatles.
The Gallotone Champion, which Sotheby's billed as the earliest Beatles related guitar to come on the market, was bought by a telephone bidder during the auction at London's Hard Rock Cafe.
The buyer, a New York investment fund manager who did not want to be identified, released a statement through Sotheby's saying he considered Lennon, "one of the most important, if not the most important, musician of the 20th century".
Included in the lot was the guitar's case, a 1957 edition of "Play the Guitar: a Self Tutor", a series of news clippings about Lennon and a typewritten letter from his Aunt Mimi regarding the arrangements to donate the trunk and its contents to a Liverpool charity.
Lennon bought the black and red guitar by mail order for about £10 a month or so before a picnic at St Peter's Church in Woolton, near Liverpool. McCartney approached Lennon later that evening as the group set up for another session at the church hall.
He impressed Lennon by teaching him the chords and words to Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock".
A few days later, Lennon asked McCartney to join the group.