Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Heriate Auctions

A Beatles poster from 1966 has sold for $137,500 at auction.

The record-breaking price makes the item the most expensive concert poster ever sold at public auction.

Sold on April 4, the well-preserved poster was used to promote the Beatles’ performance at New York’s Shea Stadium in 1966.

The concert was the second time the Fab Four played the stadium, having first appeared there in August 1965.

Antiquesandthearts.com reports the poster, sold via Heritage Auctions, was owned by a single Boston family who held onto the collectible for 54 years before offering it up for sale.

(The auction of another Shea Stadium poster for $125,000 in November 2019 may have led them to decide it was time to part with it.)

Concert promoter Sid Bernstein is said to have produced only a few hundred copies of the cardboard posters to promote the show.

Only between five or six originals are known to remain.

While still drawing a tremendous crowd of over 40,000, the 1966 concert failed to sell out the stadium’s 54,000 capacity.

This was said to have been taken by the band as a quiet indication that Beatlemania may have been on the way out.

“Curiously enough the second Shea Stadium concert had about 11,000 seats unsold,” Beatles producer George Martin shared in the Beatles’ Anthology series. “So it was a pretty unsettling time. And it was against this background that they said, ‘Right, we definitely won’t do anymore. We are going to have a break and then we are going into the studio to make a record.’”

So wearied of touring was Beatle George Harrison, he later confessed to having entirely forgotten the Beatles had even visited the stadium twice.

Following the event, the Beatles would play their final public concert only a matter of days later on the 29th of August 1966 in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park before retiring to complete work on their era-defining record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Beatles Shea Stadium Concert Poster Sets $137,500 World Record at Heritage Auctionshttps://t.co/Pw1jY2aDpb #TheBeatles #HeritageAuctions #Entertainment pic.twitter.com/tPtfJejrLq

— Heritage Auctions (@HeritageAuction) April 7, 2020