Christie's Elton John evening sale proves Wednesday night is alright for buying

Nearly 50 years ago, Sir Elton John sang, “What have I got to do to make you love me? What have I got to do to make you care?” One apparent answer arrived at Christie’s Rockefeller Center saleroom in New York on Wednesday night: auction off some of your favourite art and personal effects, and the bidders will do the rest.

An evening sale of objects from John’s recently sold condo in Atlanta, Georgia, rocketed to $6.3m ($8m with fees) last night (21 February), near the upper limit of its $4.1m to $6.4m presale estimate range (calculated without fees). Of the 50 lots scheduled to cross the auction block, 49 found buyers, and one was withdrawn before the opening gavel.

The objects were all once stored in John’s condo in East Atlanta, which sold in 2023 for $7.2m. John told the Wall Street Journal last year that he bought the property in large part to make touring easier—Atanta’s central location in the US meant he could perform in another city and still sleep in his own bed the same night. His last tour, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, wrapped up last year, and after it, John and his husband David Furnish decided to sell the Peachtree Road condo. Christie's was happy to help the couple clean it out.

However, the art collected by the Tiny Dancer singer often took a backseat to memorabilia and luxury items when it came to driving bidding on Wednesday. The results may not provide much clarity to art professionals still uneasy about the state of the market, but the sale total was strong enough to push those questions off a bit longer.

Farewell mellow bid road

The first four lots of the sale were among the buzziest. A chunky white pair of prescription sunglasses worn by John during a London concert went six times over its $3,000 high estimate, fetching $18,000 ($22,680). A custom pair of rocket-shaped cocktail strainers designed by Theo Fennell—the father of Saltburn director Emerald Fennell—sold for $40,000 ($50,400 with fees), quadruple its $10,000 high target.

Next, a neon sign reading “HORNY?!”, which the photographer David LaChapelle designed for John’s Las Vegas residency in the mid-2000s, fetched $21,000 ($26,460), fourteen times its $1,500 top expectation. A pair of silver platform boots with John’s initials stitched in red leather were estimated to sell for between $5,000 to $10,000 but instead elevated to $75,000 ($94,500 with fees).

The electricity in the saleroom after this opening quartet made it feel like Christie’s could be in for a historic night. But after John’s boots trotted off the block, the charismatic Tash Perrin, the auctioneer for the sale’s first half, paused the proceedings to speak to a Christie’s clerk offstage.

Although she returned to the rostrum after two minutes, it took longer for the energy to catch up to her. None of the three works of art that followed exceeded its high target before fees.

First, Herb Ritts’s splashy nude photograph Waterfall II, Hollywood, 1988 sold for a within-estimate $12,000 ($15,120). One of the most well-known photos from the sale, Smoke + Veil, Paris, 1958, by self-taught photographer William Klein—which sparked controversy when it appeared in Vogue Paris in 1958 for its depiction of a woman smoking a cigarette—hammered at its $30,000 low target, reaching $37,800 after fees. The winning bid for Straight Lines in all Directions #9 (1996), the first of two works by Minimalist titan Sol LeWitt, landed $5,000 below the work’s $50,000 high estimate; it made $56,700 with fees.

But fashion and musical memorabilia soon brought the bidders back to life. An 18 karat gold and sapphire Rolex Daytona with a leopard-print band pounced more than twice over its top estimate to reach $140,000 ($176,400 with fees). Immediately after, John’s Yamaha Conservatory grand piano ran up the scale to $160,000 ($201,600 with fees), more than tripling its $50,000 high target.

In total, the fluctuations between these categories set the tone for the rest of the night, with John’s memorabilia and luxury items sparking most of the bidding wars, while his art did just well enough to satisfy overall.

Mixed results for art

The most valuable lot of the sale was a Bansky triptych that John acquired directly from the elusive British artist. Flower Thrower Triptych (2017) landed at $1.55m ($1.9m with fees), edging past the upper reaches of its $1m to $1.5m estimate. Keith Haring’s untitled, bright-green-and-red face painting from 1982 also outperformed expectations, selling for $600,000 ($756,000 with fees), double the lower limits of its $300,000 to $500,000 target range.

But two photographs in the same estimate band as the Haring, Cindy Sherman’s Untitled (Film Still #39) and Andreas Gursky’s Dior Homme, could not quite feel the love tonight. The Sherman plateaued at its low target, making $378,000 with fees, and the Gursky sold for a below-estimate $240,000 ($302,400 with fees).

Three of the auction’s other anticipated highlights also missed their low targets but still sold.

Julian Schnabel’s Portrait of Elton (1997)—the cover image printed on compact discs for John’s 1997 album The Big Picture—spun out to a buyer at $150,000 ($189,000 with fees). German-Australian fashion photographer Helmut Newton’s Tied Up Torso, Ramatuelle, France 1980 barely did better, reaching $160,000 ($201,600 with fees) after only about one minute of bidding. Deborah Butterfield’s large scale sculpture Dazzle (1990), once the centrepiece of the gallery in John’s Atlanta home, limped into the barn at $80,000 ($100,800). All three lots were expected to sell for at least $200,000.

The lone withdrawal from the sale was also a work of art. John and Furnish decided to retain a heart-shaped work by Damien Hirst featuring a photograph of the couple, inscribed with the message “xxx for Elton + David love Damien Thank You”.

Memorabilia and luxury hit high notes

The results of the sale were largely defined by a paradox: although works of art generated the bulk of the sale total, memorabilia and luxury items generated most of the bidding wars. A rare Crash watch by Cartier, a favourite among timepiece collectors for its unique asymmetric casing, smashed through its $100,000 high estimate to a $220,000 hammer price ($277,200).

Another of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s custom watches—this one with a face encrusted with diamond and sapphire baguettes—more than quadrupled its high estimate, selling for $140,000 ($176,000 with fees). A “Medusa red” porcelain table service by Versace plated a winning bid of $44,000 ($55,440 with fees), more than seven times its $6,000 high estimate.

John’s beloved 1990 Bentley Continental convertible also raced to $350,000 ($441,000), ten times its $35,000 high target. The lot attracted an extraordinary 24 phone bidders, which auctioneer David Kleiweg de Zwaan, who presided over the second half of the sale, said may have been a Christie’s record.

The last lot of the night, a signed, Elton John-themed pinball machine, soared past its $15,000 high expectation to score $55,000 ($69,300 with fees); the final price, including fees, will go to the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Christie’s offering of the objects from John's Peachtree Road condo will continue via live day sales and online auctions throughout February. The house estimates the roughly 900 lots in the sale series will ultimately haul in around $10m. His holdings are the latest in a string of high-profile celebrity auctions that have proved profitable to major auction houses in an uneven art and collectibles market.

The collection of art and personal effects assembled by the late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury sold for £12.2m at Sotheby’s in London in September 2023. Art, jewellery and other objects that belonged to the late American journalist Barbara Walters sold for $5m two months later at Bonhams in New York, and the auction house said the sale prompted more bidder registrations than any of their previous auctions that year.