The asking price was, of course, $11 million. Today's headlines: Observe fresh posts and updates on Live Autograph Magazine. It comes with a note signed by Lennon that jokingly says, “Here’s the famous banned butcher cover. The cover was withdrawn almost immediately, and a tamer band photo pasted over the sleeve. It was shot as a kind of protest against the band’s American record company, Capitol, which had made a habit of reordering and splitting the band’s albums in the US to make more money, essentially butchering them. It was signed in a blue pen, barely visible, and it was not. The image depicts the four Beatles, in white smocks, draped in broken dolls and pieces of raw meat. I saw that one at an exhibition not to long ago (Ill never forget that moment as long as I live). Only one item was for sale: a printer’s proof from Lennon’s own collection, featuring photographer Robert Whitaker’s infamous “butcher cover” for the 1966 album Yesterday And Today. The exhibition featured rare photos and items from the height of the band’s fame.
When the Beatles catalogue was remastered and re-released in 2009, UK’s St Giles Street Gallery and the British Beatles Fan Club jointly hosted the Eleven Million Dollar Picture Show.
It featured an autograph and caricature by each band member and had a reserve price of just over $1 million. In 2014, a fibreglass wall segment from the Beatles’ 1964 Ed Sullivan Show appearance went up for auction. It sparked a bidding war and finally went for over $290,000. In 2013, a signed LP of the 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band went up for auction, and was expected to fetch about $30,000. Those on a later album, once the band hit it big, are nearly impossible to find. Autographs of all four members on a single object are rare.