Bob Dylan memorabilia sell for nearly half a million dollars

A collection of Bob Dylan memorabilia including letters, unpublished lyrics and handwritten lyrics of “Blowin’ in the wind” have sold for a total of $495,000, CNN reported, quoting auctioneers.

The items belonged to the estate of Dylan’s friend and fellow musician Tony Glover, who died last year. They were put up for sale in a week-long auction run by RR Auction Company.

Glover’s collection of Dylan memorabilia included personal letters and the transcripts from an interview carried out by Glover and hand-annotated by Dylan.

In one typed and signed letter — sent from the Bearsville, New York, the country retreat of his manager Albert Grossman — Dylan refers to Beatles John Lennon and Ringo Starr as “groovy” after meeting them for the first time in 1964.

“The letter’s dogged pace and free-flowing lyrical style seem to mirror the very manner in which he was aggressively approaching the song-writing process, with the mashing of typewriter keys all but audible as one reads the page, sold for $36,187,” RR Auction Company said in a release, as per CNN.

The “Blowin’ in the wind” lyrics, dated 2011 and signed by Dylan, fetched the highest price, $108,253.75, RR Auction Company said. 

Meanwhile, unpublished lyrics penned during a 1962 road trip with Glover and musician John Hammond Jr. — to see Woody Guthrie at the Brooklyn State Hospital — sold for $38,781.

The transcript from the 1971 interview between Dylan and Glover also revealed that Dylan had written “Lay Lady Lay” for Barbra Streisand.

RR Auction said Glover befriended Dylan in the Minneapolis coffee house scene. “He was one of the few hometown friends that Dylan stayed in touch with after going to NYC.

Dylan dedicated his prose-poem contribution to the 1963 Newport Folk Festival program to Glover, calling him a ‘best friend in the highest form,'” RR Auction said in the release.