The painting shown above, a 1968 watercolor by American artist Jim Dine, has an interesting story. The work was originally commissioned by Capitol Records for a Beatles album which was never made because the Beatles left Capitol and formed the Apple Records label. The graphite and watercolor on vellum lot of five works depict individual toothbrushes labeled for each member of the band The pieces, which are expected to bring $25,000-35,000, have been in the private collection of former president of Capital Records, Sal Iannucci, and his wife Aileen.

These unique pieces are part of the Bonhams & Butterfields fall auction of Modern, Contemporary and Latin American Art on November 17, 2009 in Los Angeles. The over 200-lot sale will include pieces by Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne, Pedro Coronel, Emil Filla, George Grosz, Armand Guillaumin, Henri Lebasque, Fernand Léger, Maximilien Luce, Diego Rivera, Frank Stella, Maurice Utrillo, Andy Warhol and Francisco Zúñiga, as well as a selection of contemporary Asian art. The auction catalogue's cover lot, Study for a Blue Nude, 2000 by Tom Wesselmann is expected to bring $50,000-70,000.

Whether you're looking to recreate the Brady Bunch's "silver platter" glory or just have a family that's dying to lay down some tracks, Villa Rockstar is ready to host you. The extremely, absurdly upscale villa at Eden Rock on St. Barth's offers 16,000 square feet of bliss and includes a full recording studio designed by Ocean Way Recording. But, you know that. You may not realize, however, that you'll be touching musical history – regardless of how talented you are. The console installed at Villa Rockstar was used by John Lennon when he recorded "Imagine."

So, in addition to the four enormous master suites (including one named for Lennon), full gym, private office and cars on hand, you can create a masterpiece (or not) before retiring to the pool or playing some croquet out on the lawn. Settle in for an astounding dining experience ... but only after you see what's going on at the Eden Rock Gallery (through which several amazing artists have passed.

When you get home, listen to what you have created, and try to fight the urge to go back (it won't work).

Last year, we ran a piece on the world of rare records but if a copy of the Beatles infamous "butcher cover" sells for its asking price it might set a new record. To coincide with the worldwide release of the digitally re-mastered back catalog of every Beatles album on 09/09/09 the Saint Giles Street Gallery in Norwich, England in association with the British Beatles Fan Club is showing the "Eleven Million Dollar Picture Show", a collection of rarely photographs and other memorabilia. The show includes an original banned Beatles "butcher cover", a printer's proof from the personal collection of John Lennon. The "butcher cover" will be exhibited with a note signed by John Lennon that says, "here's the famous banned butcher cover. You can sell it for 11 million dollars". And that will be the price. The album will be on show and on sale for $11 million from the September 10 onward. Butcher album covers vary in price generally fetching several thousand dollars.

The cover was the original cover of Yesterday and Today issued only in the United States and Canada. The original cover image, showing the band in white butcher coats holding doll parts and pieces of meat was shot by photographer Robert Whitaker. A few original covers were shipped to disc jockeys and store managers and an outcry immediately arose. The album was hastily recalled and a new cover was slapped on. In the collectibles world there are original untouched covers, covers bearing the second image and covers that have had the second image removed or partially peeled off. The rarer versions are still in the original shrink wrap.


[via Beatles News]

From Cityfile's Buyers and Sellers:
----Real estate heiress Caroline Cumming has cut the price on her 12,128-square-foot townhouse at 11 Spring Street in New York City, shown above. It went on the market for $39.8 million in September and is now listed at $29.5 million.
--Risa Meyer, the daughter of late socialite and philanthropist Kitty Meyer and founder of the party-goods store PlumParty.com, has put her three-bedroom condo at Trump Parc East on the market for $14.8 million. The listing is here.
--Real estate developer Hunter Lipton and his wife, Tara, have paid $4.6 million for an apartment at 255 East 74th Street.
--Christiane Celle, the founder of the Calypso boutiques and her husband, fashion photographer Antoine Verglas, have lowered the price of their duplex penthouse at 129 Lafayette Street. The four-bedroom loft went on the market for $13.995 million but is now priced at $11.999 million.The listing is here.
--Visa senior vice president Darren Parslow and art director Justin Durongsaeng paid $1.9 million for a condo at 133 West 22nd Street.
--Nicole Eddy and her husband paid $7.3 million for a penthouse at the Chelsea Modern on West 18th Street.
--National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman and his wife Michelle have paid $1.95 million for a condo at the Grand Beekman.
--More financial fallout. Hedge funder Scott Bessent has dropped the price of his duplex at One Sutton Place South again. He put it on the market for $12.5 million in October and it is now listed at $9.95 million, about $2 million less than he paid for it in 2007.
--Hotel developer Henry Kallan and his wife Emilia paid $2.995 million for a 38th-floor, three-bedroom co-op at 45 East 89th Street.
--Architect Teresa Sapey has lowered the price of her apartment at the Plaza. She bought the two-bedroom unit for $6.9 million in 2007 and put back on the market for $10 million just a few months later. It's now listed at $8.5 million.
--The latest round of 'which celebrity's house is this?' features a home on Mandeville Canyon Road in Los Angeles' Brentwood area, which sold at the end of 2008 for $2.25 million.


From the LA TImes Hot Property:
--Soap opera actor Ingo Rademacher has listed his Venice, California home. We'll check it out later as our estate of the day.
----The voice of Nickelodeon's Jimmy Neutron, Debi Derryberry has listed a four-bedroom home in Toluca Lake, California for $2.5 million. The listing is here.
Travelscape's Tim Poster has listed his Laguna Beach home at $6.9 million. The listing for the three-story custom home is here.
--Decorating maven Kitty Bartholomew has listed her own Santa Monica cottage for $2.195 million. The listing is here.

From the Telegraph:
--Nicolas Cage has sold his German castle. We checked this out earlier in the week.

From the Real Estalker:
--Mick Jagger's girlfriend L'Wren Scott has put her Los Angeles home on the market. We checked it our earlier this week.
--Manuela Herzer, a former companion of Sumner Redstone, has picked up the home belonging to Lance Bass. She paid $3.85 million. It was listed at $3.925 million when it was our estate of the day last November.
--via Page Six, Kelly Bensimon from Real Housewives of New York City is said to be selling her East Hampton, New York home for a rumored $10.9 million and Countess Luann de Lesseps from the same show is putting her Bridgehampton home up for sale for $9.5 million.
--Hank Azaria has picked up a seven-bedroom Bel Air home which was last listed $13.975 million.
--David Spade has put his Malibu home up for rent for $65,000 a month.
--Spice Girl Melanie Brown has already sold her home which we covered last week as an estate of the day. Rumor has it that it sold for above the $2,999,999 asking price.

From Berg Properties Big Time Listings:
--Rock star, author and activist Henry Rollins has listed his home in the Hollywood Hills. We checked it out earlier this week.
--A five-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills that John Lennon once lived in has come on the market for $4.5 million. The listing is here.
--Gangster legend Al Capone's onetime house in Chicago is on the market for $450,000. The two-flat building was built in 1914. The listing (without pictures) is here.
--Husband-and-wife actors William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman have paid exactly $1 million to purchase multi-unit residential building in Los Angeles' Fairfax District.
--Actor Richard T. Jones has listed his four-bedroom home in Encino for sale for $1.599 million. The property website is here.

From the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties:
--Las Vegas nightlife entrepreneur and real-estate developer Andrew Sasson has listed just-finished contemporary mansion on Kailua Beach in Oahu for $21 million. The listing is here.
--Actress Anne Archer has offering her Rhode Island condominium for $1.1 million. We'll check this one out later in the week.
--Nedra Matteucci, a fixture of the Santa Fe, New Mexico art world, is asking $13.5 million for an adobe-style compound that includes one of her galleries and five homes. The listing for the Matteucci Compound is here.


From Move Trends:
--Shaquille O'Neal has cut the price on his home on Star Island in Miami yet again. It was listed at $29 million last year when we had it as an estate of the day. It is now listed at $22.5 million.

Halcyon House, which was listed at $30 million when it was our estate of the day, has had a deep price cut to $19.5 million.

A rare, never-publicly-heard recording of a drunk and high John Lennon improvising naughty song lyrics is on offer for an estimated $30,000 - $40,000 at Bonhams' Entertainment Sale in Los Angeles on Sunday.

The six minute audiocasette, recorded in the fall of 1973, features Lennon's off-the-cuff rendition of the Lloyd Price song "Just Because." The recording took place during what Lennon referred to as his "Lost Weekend" when he and Yoko Ono separated and he took up with mistress May Pang.

The cassette is an outtake from a recording session for the song, which was included on Lennon's 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll. At the time, while working on the album with Phil Spector in Los Angeles, Lennon was heavily into drink and drugs, as reflected in the recording.

Though some of Lennon's lyrics are garbled, he can be heard to sing, in part, "I wanna take all them new singers, Carol and the other one with the nipples, I wanna take 'em and hold 'em tight, all them people that James Taylor had...I wanna suck your nipples, baby... Just a little cocaine will set me right."

The buzz at big photo auctions lately has been all about nude supermodels. Perfectly understandable, of course, but how many times can you really stand to see Gisele naked? (OK, no need to answer that). At Sotheby's latest photo sale in London on Tuesday, we're pleased to see some stunning images on offer which while short on supermodel cleavage nonetheless have plenty of appeal. Take for instance this portrait of the beautiful Brigitte Bardot taken by Terry O'Neill 1971 with an estimate of $8,000 - $12,000. Not one of the more expensive items on offer, but worth every penny in our estimation.

Also included in the amazing auction is Helmut Newton's 1975 photo of Elsa Peretti, est. $24,000 - $30,000, and his 1987 portrait of Jodie Foster, est. $14,000 - $18,000; Andy Warhol's Polaroid of Muhammad Ali taken in 1977, est. $10,000 - $14,000; David Bailey's 1969 double portrait of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, est. $20,000 - $30,000; and a recent print made from Bert Stern's famed Marilyn Monroe series (recently aped by Lindsay Lohan), est. $6,000 - $8,000. See the gallery for more.

If you thought the Beatles were so Yesterday, think again. A lock of hair from the late John Lennon sold for an incredible $48,000 at an auction held Wednesday at Gorringes in Worthington. The lock of hair, along with an autographed copy of Lennon's book A Spaniard in the Works, was part of the collection of Betty Glasow, hairdresser to The Beatles during the 1960's filming of A Hard Day's Night and Help.

Also sold at the auction were signed Beatles photographs, including one dedicated to Glasow and signed "George "Dandruff" Harrison" that went for $13,000.

So, what motivated Glasow to part with her treasures after all these years? She says that rather than have these items languishing in a drawer somewhere, she wanted fans to have the opportunity to enjoy them.

John Lennon's glasses, yes the legend himself, are up for auction on the British site 991.com. The Beatle's gold wire rimmed sunglasses are currently owned by a Japanese TV producer named Junishi Yore who got them back in 1966 when he worked as a translator for the Beatles, and they'll come with a handwritten note from Yore explaining how he came to get them from Lennon. Estimates are predicting the auction will end somewhere around $1.5 million or higher, although it's a private auction so we'll have to wait and see when the bidding ends on July 31st.

Perhaps one of the most revered musical instruments in the world (other than Clapton's sweet black Strat, "Blackie") has trumped the previous 'most expensive' piano in the world. One of the most elaborate, painstakingly detailed pieces of hand-craftsmanship - the Steinway "Alma-Tadema" has been outshined by one of the company's most unadorned - the "Model Z". But, much like Blackie, it's the instrument's celebrity owner that actually makes the difference.

The piano on which "Imagine" was written, John Lennon's 1970 Steinway was auctioned off in London to George Michael for £1.45 million (about $2.1 million), who proceeded to use it to record bits of his last album before returning it to in the Beatles Museum in Liverpool because, as he so generously supposed, "the piano was not the type of thing that should be in storage somewhere or being protected, it should be seen by people."

The musically-related real estate keeps coming. The latest is John Lennon's former home in Britain. The six-bedroom home outside Weybridge, Surrey, is where he lived as the Beatles rose to fame. Lennon, his wife Cynthia and son Julian lived at the house from 1964 to 1968. According to the article in Bloomberg, in1968, while Cynthia was in Greece, Lennon brought Yoko Ono to the house known as Kenwood. Cynthia Lennon returned home to find Yoko in her house and wearing her bathrobe. Oh if these walls could talk. The home, which also has a playroom, sauna and swimming pool is up for sale for 5.95 million pounds ($11.1 million).

[Thanks, Lana]

An angry letter written by John Lennon sold for more than $22,000 at a Bonham's auction yesterday. The note was dashed off on a piece of American Airlines notepaper, clearly in a hurry. It was written to a journalist who accused him and the Beatles of ripping off "black" songs, but John defended the band by saying that they "drank, ate and slept the music" and "it wasn't a rip off. It was a love in."  The band started off covering hit songs in dance halls, like "Money" and "Twist n' Shout," before their own songs were "good enough." Included with the letter was a photocopy of the article that prompted it and a copy of the replying letter from the same journalist.

Though some other Lennon pieces have done very well at auction this year, a black felt hat worn by Lennon in the last official Beatles photo shoot failed to sell, despite projections that it could fetch as much as $37,000.

[Image Bonhams]

One of John Lennon's schoolbooks was sold for $226,150 in a London auction of rock memorabilia. The auction house, Cooper Owen, had set a reserve price of more than $175,000 for the book, which was a copybook titled "My Anthology" and contained 10 pages of full color drawings done by the 12-year old Lennon to illustrate the lyrics of poems that were part of his literature curriculum, including The Walrus and the Carpenter and Agincourt.

If only I had known that used schoolbooks could go for so much, I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to unload my old textbooks at the end of every semester at university. Needless to say, the illustration quality in a calculus textbook would have to be fairly high to compete with Lennon's sketches, even as a child.