The highlight – with an estimate of $600,000-1.2m – is a section of the plastic backdrop wall from The Ed Sullivan Show where the Fab Four appeared on February 9, 1964.
Watched by 73 million, it was the appearance which launched the Beatles’ careers in the US. The 4ft x 1ft (1.2m x 30cm) portion of the wall, which is signed by all four Beatles along with various doodles plus the handwritten notation ‘The Beatles Were Here’, also features the signatures of a number of later performers on the show.
According to Hunter Davies in his 2016 The Beatles Book, the band signed the wall at the request of stagehand Jerry Gort. It was not intended to be kept but Gort cut out the relevant section and gave it to a wheelchair-using fan called Lofton Sproles.
Sproles sold it decades later to Rodney Cary, the owner of Southdowns Lodge in Baton Rouge, where it was displayed until 2002. It was then sold to a dealer and later a Beatles collector.
