Pink Floyd star David Gilmour holds record-breaking guitar auction for climate change charity

Musician raised £16.5m, his favourite guitar going for over £1m

Legendary Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour has sold a vast amount of his guitar collection at an auction, pulling in a record-breaking $21m (£16.5m).

Gilmour most famous guitar – a heavily modified Black Fender Stratocaster that appears on Pink Floyd tracks “Money”, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and “Comfortably Numb” – sold for $3,975,000, establishing a new world record for any guitar sold at auction and very easily breaking its $150,000 estimate.

His favourite guitar, a Martin Nazareth 1969 D-35 acoustic, went for over $1 million. In a press release about the planned auction, Gilmour spoke about the significance of his guitar collection, and how he hopes that they will help others in their new homes.

“These guitars have been very good to me and many of them have given me pieces of music over the years. They have paid for themselves many times over, but it’s now time that they moved on,” he said.

“Guitars were made to be played and it is my wish that wherever they end up, they continue to give their owners the gift of music.

“By auctioning these guitars I hope that I can give some help where it is really needed and through my charitable foundation do some good in this world. It will be a wrench to see them go and perhaps one day I’ll have to track one or two of them down and buy them back!”

Gilmour first discussed the auction with Rolling Stone earlier this year, calling it “a spring sale”, insisting “everything has got to go”.

All the proceeds from the David Gilmour Guitar Auction at Christie’s in New York will be donated to the charity ClientEarth.