AN auction in Ludlow showed the supremacy of the Beatles over other celebrities -- and even the Queen Mother.
A set of signatures of John, Paul, George and Ringo at the very beginning of their careers in 1962 fetched £600 at a sale by Mullock Madeley in Ludlow Assembly Rooms.
The hammer price was below the estimate of £1,000 to £1,500 but it easily placed the fabulous four at the top of the charts.
A collection of albums signed by Bob Dylan, Brian Ferry, Rod Stewart and Phil Collins reached £100. Sean Connery, still rated by many as the definitive James Bond on film, was snapped up for £25 but the current Bond, Pierce Brosnan, went for just £15.
The Beatles also managed to beat the Royals. The most evocative of 16 lots from the archive of Robert Marrington, who ran Sandringham House for 35 years, was a signed letter from the Queen Mother written the day after the death of her husband George VI.
Full set
But at £440 even that remarkable document was worth just under three quarters of a full set of Beatles autographs.
Among items of local interest, a vellum document from 1706 about tolls at Ludlow market and an act of Parliament to authorise railway links from Bishop's Castle in the 1860s failed to find buyers. A group of 19th century documents about properties in Church Stretton sold for £80 against an estimate of £70 to £100.
Mullock Madeley's next documents sale in Ludlow is on September 11.
Beatles out-sell Queen Mum at local auction
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