Mick Jagger performs "Everybody Needs Someone to Love" at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles
Looking for the perfect gift for the Rolling Stones fan who has everything? How about a lock of Mick Jagger’s hair? One carefully preserved lock of the frontman’s tresses can be yours for an estimated auction price of between $2,300 and $3,100, according to Bonham’s, the British auction house. Auction-house devotees will note that this estimate is significantly more than what Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards’ hair fetched at auction, reportedly a mere $1,400.
Buyer beware, though: The hair in question was snipped from the singer’s hair well before he was ever in the Rolling Stones. Apparently the hair was clipped from Jagger’s head and preserved by a former girlfriend’s grandmother back in the pre-Stones early 1960s while Jagger was enrolled at the London School of Economics. The lock is being offered by Chrissie Shrimpton, whose grandmother saved the hair – “unbeknown to her at the time,” according to Bonham’s – in a paper envelope on which was written, “Mick Jagger’s hair after being washed + trimmed by Chris at Rose Hill Farm.” Along with the hair comes a statement of provenance — namely that this lock was saved by Shrimpton’s grandmother then passed to Shrimpton’s aunt before being returned to Chrissie by a cousin taking care of personal effects. The proceeds from the sale of Jagger’s hair will go to charity.
(MORE: Mick Jagger’s 1969 Love Letters Sell At Auction for over $300,000)
While purchasing a lock of Mick Jagger’s hair may seem strange, in the world of celebrity memorabilia it’s not entirely out of the ordinary. As CNN reported, a clump of hair believed to have been snipped from Elvis Presley’s scalp when he joined the Army in 1958 sold for $18,300 in 2009, and a single moustache hair pulled from John Dillinger’s death mask was part of a lot that sold for $5,400 in 2012. Besides, a lock of hair is not nearly as perplexing as the Beatles’ fan who bought John Lennon’s molar, nor the person who shelled out the big bucks for Lady Gaga’s fake fingernail, which fetched $12,000 when it went on the auction block earlier this month.
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