Shrewsbury musician’s guitar collection sells for £18,000 at auction
A collection of guitars owned by popular late Shrewsbury musician Neil Jackson sold for £18,000, including premium, at an auction in the town.
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Halls Fine Art auctioneer Alexander Clement was delighted with the prices paid for the guitars, which spanned from 1914 to 2012, at the successful pictures, ceramics and collectables auction in Shrewsbury.
Top prices in the collection, which included electric, acoustic and electro-acoustic guitars, was £2,100 for a Gretsch 1959 Double Anniversary hollow-bodied electric guitar with a case.
Other leading prices were £1,900 for a 1961 Gretsch Chet Atkins 'Tennesean' electric guitar, £1,850 for a 1963 Gretsch Chet Atkins 'Country Gentleman' electric guitar and £1,600 for a 1972 Fender 'Mustang' electric bass guitar.
A Fender 'Tremolux' amplifier stack, dating to between 1965-’70, sold for £1,400, a Hofner electric 'violin' bass guitar made £1,050, a Harmony 'Meteor' electric guitar in sunburst colour found a buyer at £900, a 2012 Gibson Les Paul Special electric guitar sold for £750, a 1962 Burns, London, 'Vista Sonic' electric guitar made £650 and two vintage Vox Escort and Guild Model 66-J amplifiers made £550.
Neil, who died aged 73 in 2020, was 14 when he started singing in a school group called Tradewinds and taught himself to play the guitar.
He went on to join the Oscar York Band, a Wolverhampton show band in which his uncle Tony played the keyboard. The family pairing then formed Tailormade in the 1990s, with Neil as singer and guitarist playing swing and pop music.
Prompted by the popularity of 40s music, a new band, Moonlight Serenade, was then formed to play music from the Glenn Miller era.
Alexander, who admitted to being a child in a sweetshop when cataloguing the guitars, said: “It was a really interesting collection and I’m pleased with the prices achieved for the guitars that sold.
“It will now be up to Neil’s widow, Jenny, to decide whether she wants to keep the small number of higher valued guitars that didn’t sell or to reoffer them at a future auction.
“Neil was very well known in the area as a talented musician who played in a number of bands during his lifetime.”
