Pink Floyd fans ‘queuing round the block’ as David Gilmour flogs guitar collection for £17m in charity auction

PINK Floyd star David Gilmour’s guitar collection has fetched a record £17million at auction. More than 120 instruments from his career went on sale, with fans queuing round the block in New York. A 1969 black Fender Stratocaster, used on albums The Wall, Wish You Were Here, and The Dark Side of the Moon, went […]

PINK Floyd star David Gilmour’s guitar collection has fetched a record £17million at auction.

More than 120 instruments from his career went on sale, with fans queuing round the block in New York.

Getty Images - Getty

David Gilmour splashed the cash from the guitar action into environmental group Clean Earth, and said a speech by 16 year-old campaigner Greta Thunberg spurred him on[/caption]

A 1969 black Fender Stratocaster, used on albums The Wall, Wish You Were Here, and The Dark Side of the Moon, went for a guitar record £3.1million.

The previous highest price was for Eric Clapton’s Black Strat Blackie, which went for £624,000 in 2004.

Gilmour’s 1954 white Fender Stratocaster used on Another Brick In The Wall sold for £1.43million.

The 73-year-old was raising funds for clean air campaigners Client Earth.

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It was guitars galore at the auction in New York as more than 120 of Gilmour’s instruments went up for auction[/caption]

AP:Associated Press

Topping the bill was the star’s legendary ‘Black Strat’, used on iconic albums The Wall, Wish You Were Here and The Dark Side of the Moon, which went for £3.1million[/caption]

AP:Associated Press

Gilmour playing a gig in Pompeii, Italy, in 2016[/caption]

Reuters

The event started an hour late because guitar-hungry fans were queuing around the block in the Rockefeller Center[/caption]

AFP - Getty

The Pink Floyd star’s white Fender Stratocaster, featuring on Another Brick In The Wall, got £1.43million[/caption]

He said: “The climate crisis is the greatest challenge that humanity will ever face, and we are within a few years of the effects of global warming being irreversible.

“As Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, said in a speech earlier this year, ‘Either we choose to go on as a civilisation, or we don’t’.

“The choice is that simple.”

Christie’s delayed the start by an hour due to an unprecedented number of bidders queuing round the block in Rockefeller Center.

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