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The copy of "Double Fantasy" that Lennon signed
for Mark David Chapman a few hours before his death on Dec. 8,
1980 is being sold by a private collector through New
Jersey-based Goldin Auctions.
Bidding on Tuesday stood at $450,000 but a spokesman said the
auction house expected it to sell for about $1.5 million at the
close of the online auction on Saturday.
Chapman, a borderline psychotic from Hawaii, shot Lennon four
times at close range for what he called "self-glory." The
musician was returning home to the Dakota Apartments by Central
Park with his wife, Yoko Ono. Lennon, 40, died on the way to
hospital.
Goldin Auctions said Chapman had got Lennon to sign the album
earlier in the day and then threw it in a planter outside the
Dakota Apartments after the shooting. It bears police markings
from when it was taken into evidence.
Goldin Auctions called it "arguably the most important Rock N
Roll relic ever for sale."
In tributes on Tuesday to the late Beatle, Paul McCartney
tweeted; "A sad sad day, but remembering my friend John with the
great joy he brought to the world."
Ringo Starr, the other surviving Beatle, said: "I'm asking Every
music radio station in the world sometime today play Strawberry
Fields Forever. Peace and love."
Ono called for peace and gun law reform and tweeted the
photograph she took of Lennon's blood-splattered eyeglasses,
with the message: "Over 1,436,000 people have been killed by
guns in the U.S.A. since John Lennon was shot and killed on Dec.
8, 1980."
(Writing by Richard Chang and Jill Serjeant; Editing by Rosalba
O'Brien and Stephen Coates)
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