An auction at Christie’s this week brought in $936,438 for actor Richard Gere. He says he’ll give the money to charity. Apparently Gere no longer needed a million dollars worth of guitars.
Gere auctioned off more than 100 pieces from a collection of guitars he started 40 years ago.
Christie’s has a pretty slick video interview with Richard Gere, along with some other videos showing off the collection. It’s emphasized that these are guitars Gere bought over the years because he liked the way they sounded, not because he was consciously building a collection.
Gere grew up in a musical family and was trained on the trumpet. As a teenager he taught himself to play the guitar (he says he has “a few idiosyncrasies” as a player).
For more on the actor, read the Who2 biography of Richard Gere.
For more on the auction, read about it here at Christie’s, or here at Art Daily.