Buddy Holly Poster From ‘the Day the Music DIed’ Sells for $447,000

The one recognized poster from “The Day the Music Died,” the live performance that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Massive Bopper have been touring to when their airplane crashed on Feb. 3, 1959, has offered for a record-setting $447,000 at Heritage Auctions.

The poster’s closing value shattered the home’s earlier document value of $275,000, beforehand held by a Beatles 1966 Shea Stadium live performance poster, which offered at Heritage on April 18.


Whereas somewhat morbid, the poster’s worth and rarity are past query: Holly, Valens and the Massive Bopper (J.P. Richardson) died when their airplane crashed close to Clear Lake, Iowa, on their solution to a present in Moorhead, Minn. The live performance was to happen as a part of the “Winter Dance Occasion” tour on the Moorhead Armory; the crash, after all, has been immortalized as “The Day the Music Died” in Don McLean’s 1971 hit “American Pie.”


“Heritage is thrilled to interrupt the earlier document for a live performance poster by greater than $170,000,” mentioned Heritage Auctions’ Pete Howard, “however not in the least shocked, given the significance, the distinctiveness and the gravitas of this wonderful window card, which marketed rock and roll’s first tragedy.”


The poster that offered Friday could be the just one from the present nonetheless in existence. It initially had been affixed to a phone pole however fell to the bottom; there aren’t any pinholes, solely the residue of the sticky materials used to maintain it in place. It was found by a upkeep man, who positioned it in a closet, face down, and forgot about it for 50 years.A put up for a live performance earlier within the “Winter Dance Occasion” tour was offered by Heritage in April 2020 for $125,000.The public sale continues by means of Sunday at HA.com/7297.