The mania for things Beatle continues more than 40 years after the Fabs called it a hard day's night.
On Wednesday, Bonhams auction house in London sold for almost $180,000 the famous grotty leather jacket that George Harrison bought for all of $14 in the late summer of 1960 in Hamburg.
The northern German city was, of course, where the pre-Ringo mop tops played their first overseas dates and honed their rock 'n' roll chops to incendiary perfection in venues such as the Kaiserkeller, the Top Ten and the Star-Club.
The jacket – at least one Beatles historian claims Harrison's and the jackets of his fellow Liverpudlians are, in fact, Luftwaffe surplus from the Second World War – was a staple of Harrison's wardrobe on the stage and off until 1962. Eventually, Harrison (who died in 2001) gave it to his oldest brother, Harry, who consigned it to Bonhams.
Also sold at the auction: a pair of custom-made black leather Beatle boots that Harrison stomped around in circa 1964. They went into the bidding carrying a presale estimate of $19,000 to $24,000 and sold for almost $100,000.
Clearly someone loved them, yeah, yeah, yeah.