Beatles photos net £253k at auction
A TEENAGE photographer’s shots of The Beatles’ first US concerts have sold for £253,000 at auction.
Mike Mitchell was 18 when he snapped hundreds of never-before-seen photographs of the band’s performances at the Washington Coliseum and the Baltimore Civic Centre in 1964.
He also attended a press conference ahead of the performance and the band’s arrival.
The negatives, taken with ambient light since Mitchell had no flash, sat in his basement until the emergence of digital technology.
The complete archive is made up of more than 400 negatives from the two concerts – 46 of which were seen for the first time in 2011 when they were digitally restored as high quality prints and sold at a Christie’s auction in New York for an accumulated $362,000 (£224,000).
The entire collection – including the negatives and copyright of those sold in New York – were sold at a Beatles auction in Merseyside yesterday.
Apart from the 46 images sold in 2011, the remainder have never been seen.
Auctioneer Paul Fairweather labelled the collection “incredible.”
A 1984 black Mercedes once owned by George Harrison also sold for £43,200 at the Omega auction, while a hotel directory signed by all four of The Beatles was snapped up for £9,840.