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Beatles Signed Card - December 25, 1962

A very nice set of signatures from the Beatles last residency in Hamburg.  Signed December 25, 1962.

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Permalink Reply by Thorsten Knublauch on August 13, 2024 at 9:51pm

For you all to read - here is the chapter from my book The Beatles Mach Schau in Hamburg (I leave out the footnotes).

Missing Christmas at home was difficult for the Beatles - but nevertheless they celebrated at several German parties.

On Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1962 the Star-Club was closed and Manfred Weißleder threw a party at the Hotel Pacific for 27 people, paying DM 734.50 for food and drinks (including DM 20.00 in tips for each of the six waiters during the party) and additional DM 160.00 for the service - a generous total of DM 894.50. There was turkey and a lot to drink - mainly sparkling wine, as seen on the bill. In addition, Weißleder gave everybody who didn’t already have one a gold bracelet engraved with the Star-Club logo. When everyone was drunk, they sang Christmas carols, accompanied by Paul at the piano! Celebrations of this kind were apparently not nusual and an indicator of the good care taken by Weißleder towards his staff and musicians.

Fred Fascher said that he sat that day with John, Paul, Ringo, Gerry Marsden and Tony Sheridan on the floor of the living room in his parent’s apartment eating frankfurter sausages and pea soup cooked by his mother.

Paul remembered eleven years later sitting at his girlfriend Heike’s table with her mother and grandma eating a huge fish: “We were all really miserable - spending Christmas away from home is never much fun. This German girl invited me to spend a traditional Christmas with her family, and I thought of all the food and said ‘Yes’. Instead of turkey there was this huge fish on the table, looking at me, and I also spied this huge bowl of white stuff. So I had a tiny bit of fish and piled a whole lot of this mashed potato on my plate, took one huge mouthful and it was horseradish sauce. It tasted foul but I had to eat every bit of it - this girl’s granny was sitting there watching me all the time. That was just about the end as far as I was concerned - definitely a dreadful Christmas.”

Heike confirmed the story, adding that it was carp and she even remembered the article where the Beatles spoke about “fish with eyes on Christmas in Germany” - it was her fish.

George was not with Astrid nor any other family and spent some time at the British Sailors Society - the British pub - eating soup. It seems Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes were also looking for a bit of home here as John Frankland, rhythm guitarist, remembered: “When they put out the soup, the minister attached to the mission asked, ‘Would anyone like to say grace?’, and George said, ‘Yes, thank Christ for the soup!’ in that wonderful deadpan voice of his. The minister said, ‘Any more of that and you’re all out.’”

Afterwards George wrote a letter to Margaret Price: “The Germans have Christmas on the 24 th - still, we didn’t bother telling them that they had ‘got it wrong again’. We only have 5 more days to go, and then we’ll be away from this place for good [I HOPE].”

Likely not all mentioned parties took place on the same day, December 24th.

Astrid met with the Beatles during Christmas to give them some presents. “I gave John a Marquis de Sade, Dialogue Between A Priest And A Dying Man, and Paul something by Baudelaire. I can’t remember what the other books were but I do remember George saying ‘Is mine about Mickey Mouse?’ - which I took to be a nice little joke about his youth and a reflection on how he thought John and Paul were more intelligent than he was.”

Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on July 23, 2024 at 7:23am

The auctioneer has added a couple of images that makes the album page look a whole lot better. I wonder how they managed to produce such an awful image before (as shown above), assuming that the new images really are more true to life.

Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on July 23, 2024 at 10:09pm
Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on July 24, 2024 at 8:08am

Final price of the Beatles card was £5,500 before 30%+ commission, which I guess is what you'd expect.

I have to say that the auction as a whole did not make an exciting watch. Very few lots got much higher than the bottom estimate or top pre-sale commission bid and only the clearly genuine lots (like the Freddie Mercury) really got going. The prices achieved for some rock n' pop lots (e.g. Moon, Harrison, Lennon, Marley) definitely suggest that "the market" was skeptical about them, despite Adam's opinion.

Permalink Reply by Thorsten Knublauch on August 11, 2024 at 11:03am

I think this is a near perfect fake.

Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on August 11, 2024 at 10:07pm

I wouldn't be surprised if you are right Thorsten. I'm not enough of a Beatles expert to judge such early signatures but something about the piece as a whole also makes me skeptical. I've rarely seen a set of Beatles autographs with all four inscribing "love from" (or similar) and the four signatures are extremely well positioned on the page. The ink also looks remarkably consistent throughout. I guess the pencilled place and date info will check out but it doesn't take much to know where the Beatles were on any particular day.

As you know, this set was collected by a German collector. whose collection is being sold off by Dawsons. I've not been convinced that all the items in the collection are genuine.

Permalink Reply by Thorsten Knublauch on August 11, 2024 at 10:34pm

It is a too good to be true item. I dont like esp. Ringo while the others are really good. The place and date - why should anybody at the time write such on a piece of paper? It is a place one knows from the books but the Beatles literally were nobodys at the time to let a fan annotate such piece. In addition they mostly would write German dedications if at all. And if this would have been an autograph for english people in the mission the annotation would have been english and not german.

Nevertheless this might be the best fake I have ever seen - if it is ...

And yes - that collection with just A-list signatures is strange.

Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on August 11, 2024 at 10:38pm

I had assumed that the pencil annotation was written by the collector rather than the original recipient, though I don't remember seeing such annotations on the other lots in the auction.

Permalink Reply by Thorsten Knublauch on August 11, 2024 at 11:30pm

If I was the collector I would have written such info on the back....

Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on August 12, 2024 at 1:21am

Agreed, but some people think in different ways and at least it was in pencil, unlike here....

Permalink Reply by Thorsten Knublauch on August 12, 2024 at 2:29am

Yes - but if as you said it was the collector and not the first hand recipient it would have been on the back IMO.

And for the first hand recipient there was no need at all to ad this at the time as the Beatles were nobodys. In addition - autograph books were very unusual at the time in Germany.

As mentioned - although it looks very good the complete story and appearance is very odd.

Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on August 12, 2024 at 5:55am

Agreed. In the John & Yoko example the recipient and collector were one and the same person. He obviously wasn't too concerned about future investment potential as he had things signed on both sides of his autograph book pages. Thankfully this didn't apply to John & Yoko but my Tate and Polanski from his collection are back-to-back!

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