I can’t believe Bob is 82.
He’s still going strong though, releasing his 40th album in 2023 and regularly playing live.
To me, only The Beatles are comparable in the modern rock cannon for popular, critical and cultural impact.
And for collectors that means Bob Dylan memorabilia is valuable and likely to grow more so.
Timothée Chalamet is filming a Bob Dylan biopic right now. That will only increase interest and value.
From original records to papers and lyric sheets, people want a piece of Bob.
He's a genuine legend and it's hard to overstate his influence.
If you’ve picked something up along your own Rough and Rowdy Ways perhaps it’s worth selling now.
Here are the six most valuable pieces of Bob Dylan memorabilia to give you an idea of values.
1 - The lyrics to Like a Rolling Stone
Handwritten lyrics from Bob Dylan are important historic documents. Image courtesy of Sotheby's.
So how does it feel to own Bob Dylan lyrics?
Pretty good from a financial point of view.
Is this Bob’s greatest song? I think it’s my favourite: a blizzard of ideas and images that has been described as perfectly capturing the social upheavals of the 1960s.
Bob’s got a Nobel Prize for Literature now, so you really can call him a poet with no risk of controversy.
These lyrics were handwritten by him, and show a work in progress coming to fruition for the 1965 recording.
Over 4 pages, Bob changes the world.
Someone paid $2 million at auction for those pages in 2014.
2 - Blowin’ in the Wind one-off recording
Record breaking record. This is the only copy of this version of Blowin' in the Wind. Image courtesy of Christie's London.
Would you pay £1.48 million for a Bob song?
Even if it’s a great song?
Blowin' in the Wind is perhaps the archetypal issue of his early folk/blues protest style.
What makes it over-a-million-pounds-worth of great song though is its format.
This was a one-off, done in the spirit of NFTs and records like the Wu Tang Clan’s legendary single physical copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
Bob re-recorded his early masterpiece in 2022, adding a backing band.
It was captured on an acetate, given special treatments to preserve it and auctioned for nearly £1.5 million ($1.77 million).
3 - The “going electric” guitar
Controversial: this guitar was the most valuable in history when it sold at auction in 2013. Image courtesy of Christie's.
Did Bob Dylan betray his roots and a burgeoning social protest movement that grew out of acoustic ballads in 1965?
Some people thought so.
He was booed when he first plugged in a guitar on stage at Newport Folk Festival.
“Judas” was the cry at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966.
“I don’t believe you,” replied Bob.
And the world agreed.
His work reached a huge, young audience by adopting the popular medium of the time - blues-based rock and roll.
The guitar with which he made that move, in 1965 alongside members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, was a Fender Stratocaster.
It was sold for $965,000 or £590,432 at auction in 2013.
It took a lot of detective work and a lawsuit to prove that the guitar was "the one" and that the owner had the right to sell it.
I think it would go for multiples of that figure now. The famous guitar market has exploded in the past few years.
4 - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall lyrics
Joan Baez alongside Bob Dylan at the height of the so-called "protest song" era of the early 60s. Image from NARA.
This song is no fun. A bleak meditation on what a nuclear war might look like.
Joan Baez’s version - she was his companion, partner and muse for a while - is particularly haunting.
It was one of many standout tracks on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, his second album.
That’s the record that really turned the Beatles on to Dylan. They met him in 1964, and Bob rolled them their first joint, turned them on, and further changed the world.
A handwritten draft of the lyrics sold for $485,000 at auction in 2015.
Dylan’s words are the result of a lot of hard work, often over several drafts, and often written on typewriters. Other versions of the lyrics to this song have also gone to auction.
5 - 1963 Martin D-28 acoustic guitar
Bob Dylan with the guitar at the Concert for Bangladesh.
Here’s a great story for collectors.
Dylan sold this guitar to his guitar repair guy, Larry Cragg, in 1977. Cragg immediately loosened the strings to reduce the tension on the neck and put it into climate controlled storage. He never played it.
That helps the value. As does the fact it’s only the second Bob Dylan guitar to make it to auction.
Most notably, this instrument was played by Bob at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971, an event arranged by his great friend George Harrison. He also strapped it on for the Rolling Thunder Revue tours.
Larry paid Bob $500 for the guitar.
Someone paid Larry $396,500 for it in 2017.
6 - Lay Lady Lay lyrics
Dylan's simpler words were no less meaningful to fans.
Nashville Skyline was one of Dylan’s many rebirths.
The 1969 album was recorded in the capital of country music. Johnny Cash appears in duet with one of his only peers as an American folk poet.
As much of the rock world went psychedelic and heavy. Bob went country.
Where his early songs were often complicated, rhythmic and obscure, the words of Lay Lady Lay were simple, straightforward and heartfelt.
From “Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine, I'm on the pavement. thinking about the government” to “Stay, lady, stay. Stay with your man awhile. Until the break of day.”
The lyrics were sold in 2014 at auction for $217,000.
They have subsequently been listed for sale with an estimate of $500,000 to $600,000 but no sale was recorded.
A huge body of work
Dylan has been around for so long - and hopefully will be with us for a while yet - that there is a huge amount of material to collect.
If you limit yourself to officially released music you could have a very full collection.
An early version of Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan with four tracks that never made it to the full release is among the most valuable Dylan records, making $35,000 in the right condition.
Concert tickets and programmes can be sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars if they’re from notable shows.
Photography and art are valuable. Bob is something of a painter and new, signed art prints were going for around £12,000 a couple of years ago.
A Don’t Look Back film poster made around $25,000 at auction.
Bob’s autograph often goes for thousands of pounds. On records it is much more valuable.
His papers must be somewhere near priceless.
Even a 2010 handwritten version of Like a Rolling Stone made around $70,000 at auction.
Lyrics were listed on a memorabilia site for a while with massive prices: The Times They Are A-Changin’ for $2.2 million (£1.8m); Subterranean Homesick Blues for $1.2 million (£961,000) and Lay Lady Lay for $650,000 (£520,000).
Be wary of authenticity though: in 2022 he apologised for using an autopen to sign some books while suffering from vertigo during the 2019 Covid pandemic.
In his statement he confirmed all other signatures during his career had been authentic.
Guitars and pieces of guitars are extremely attractive to rock and roll buyers.
Even a guitar bridge can be worth thousands if the magic of Bob has touched it.
Just a couple of Bob’s have been sold. Should the rest ever go, they will make huge figures.
A piano - an instrument with which he is less associated - owned by Dylan was sold for $217,000 in 2022. A harmonica from 1986 made $16,000 in 2023, going for around three times its estimate.
There's no end to Bob fever.
Buy Bob Dylan memorabilia now
You can buy Bob Dylan memorabilia today.
