Rolling Stones Drummer Charlie Watts’ Copy of ‘The Great Gatsby’ Could Sell for £300,000 at Auction
2 min
Charlie Watts created the consistent beat for the Rolling Stones as the band’s drummer on every album by the group since 1964, but his first love was jazz.
That passion, alongside a zeal for modern literature, will be on display in a two-part auction at Christie’s of rare-edition books and jazz memorabilia that is expected to fetch more than £2.5 million (US$3.2 million). Watts died in August 2021 at age 80.
Among 500 items to be offered in a live sale on Sept. 28 in London, and in an online sale running from Sept. 15-29, is a copy F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, inscribed to MGM screenwriter Harold Goldman as “the original Gatsby,” for an estimate between £200,000 and £300,000. Set in the Roaring ’20s, the novel captures the jazz age of the time.
Watts began collecting jazz memorabilia when he was in his teens, Dave Green, a childhood friend and jazz musician, said in a news release. The collection “reflects his enduring love of the music and the musicians who made it,” Green said.
Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023
Among the memorabilia are items Watts collected related to saxophonist Charlie Parker, including his Associated Musicians Membership card, contracts for Parker’s Alto Break sessions, and a pair of awards from Down Beat magazine in 1952 that are expected to achieve up to £15,000.
Watts pursued jazz even through his career as the Stones’ drummer, joining his bandmate Ian Stewart, a keyboardist, in the “boogie-woogie” band Rocket 88 in the 1970s. The Charlie Watts Big Band performed globally in the 1980s and in 1993, he released a jazz album, Warm & Tender, with the Charlie Watts Quintet.
Watts’ music collection also includes an annotated score of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, estimated to achieve up to £15,000, and two scores by Irving Berlin. Songs from Top Hat and Songs from Follow the Fleet by Berlin are inscribed to Ginger Rogers, and are estimated to achieve between £4,000 and £6,000.
Other top literature lots include rare editions of books by Agatha Christie, George Orwell, Arthur Conan Doyle, and James Joyce. Christie’s The Thirteen Problems carries an estimate between £40,000 and £60,000.
The range of items will give many Watts fans a chance at owning something the legendary drummer once collected, as prices range as low as £800.
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Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
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Couples find that lab-grown diamonds make it cheaper to get engaged or upgrade to a bigger ring. But there are rocky moments.
4 min
Wedding planner Sterling Boulet has some advice for brides-to-be regarding lab-grown diamonds, which cost a fraction of the natural ones.
“If you’re trying to get your man to propose, they’ll propose faster if you offer this as an option,” says Boulet, of Raleigh, N.C. Recently, she adds, a friend’s fiancé “thanked me the next three times I saw him” for telling him about the cheaper lab-made option.
Man-made diamonds are catching on, despite some lingering stigma. This year was the first time that sales of lab-made and natural mined loose diamonds, primarily used as center stones in engagement rings, were split evenly, according to data from Tenoris, a jewellery and diamond trend-analytics company.
The rise of lab-made stones, however, is bringing up quirks alongside the perks. Now that blingier engagement rings—above two or three carats—are more affordable, more people are dealing with the peculiarities of wearing rather large rocks.
Esther Hare, a 5-foot-11-inch former triathlete, sought out a 4.5-carat lab-made oval-shaped diamond to fit her larger hands as a part of her vow renewal in Hawaii last year. It was a far cry from the half-carat ring her husband proposed with more than 25 years ago and the 1.5-carat upgrade they purchased 10 years ago. Hare, 50, who lives in San Jose, Calif., and works in high tech, chose a $40,000 lab-made diamond because “it’s nuts” to have to spend $100,000 on a natural stone. “It had to be big—that was my vision,” she says.
But the size of the ring has made it less practical at times. She doesn’t wear it for athletic training and swaps in her wedding band instead. And she is careful to leave it at home when traveling. “A lot of times I won’t take it on vacation because it’s just a monster,” she says.
The average retail price for a one-carat lab-made loose diamond decreased to $1,426 this year from $3,039 in 2020, according to the Tenoris data. Similar-sized loose natural diamonds cost $5,426 this year, compared with $4,943 in 2020.
Lab-made diamonds have essentially the same chemical makeup as natural ones, and look the same, unless viewed through sophisticated equipment that gauges the characteristics of emitted light.
At Ritani, an online jewellery retailer, lab-made diamond sales make up about 70% of the diamonds sold, up from roughly 30% two years ago, says Juliet Gomes, head of customer service at the company, based in White Plains, N.Y.
Ritani sometimes records videos of the lab-diamonds pinging when exposed to a “diamond tester,” a tool that judges authenticity, to show customers that the man-made rocks behave the same as natural ones. “We definitely have some deep conversations with them,” Gomes says.
Not all gem dealers are rolling with these stones.
Philadelphia jeweller Steven Singer only stocks the natural stuff in his store and is planning a February campaign to give about 1,000 one-carat lab-made diamonds away free to prove they are “worthless.” Anyone can sign up online and get one in the mail; even shipping is free. “I’m not selling Frankensteins that were built in a lab,” Singer says.
Some brides are turned off by the larger bling now allowed by the lower prices.When her now-husband proposed with a two-carat lab-grown engagement ring, Tiffany Buchert, 40, was excited about the prospect of marriage—but not about the size of the diamond, which she says struck her as “costume jewellery-ish.”
“I said yes in the moment, of course, I didn’t want it to be weird,” says the physician assistant from West Chester, Pa.
But within weeks, she says, she fessed up, telling her fiancé: “I think I hate this ring.”
The couple returned it and then bought a one-carat natural diamond for more than double the price.
When Boulet, the wedding planner in Raleigh, got engaged herself, she was over the moon when her fiancé proposed with a 2.3 carat lab-made diamond ring. “It’s very shiny, we were almost worried it was too shiny and was going to look fake,” she says.
It doesn’t, which presents another issue—looking like someone who really shelled out for jewellery. Boulet will occasionally volunteer that her diamond ring came from a lab.
“I don’t want people to think I’m putting on airs, or trying to be flashier than I am,” she says.
For Daniel Teoh, a 36-year-old software engineer outside of Detroit, buying a cheaper lab-made diamond for his fiancée meant extra room in his $30,000 ring budget.
Instead of a bigger ring, he got her something they could both enjoy. During a walk while on an annual ski trip to South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Teoh popped the question and handed his now-wife a handmade wooden box that included a 2.5-carat lab-made diamond ring—and a car key.
She put on the ring, celebrated with both of their sisters and a friend, who was the unofficial photographer of the happy event, and then they drove back to the house. There, she saw a 1965 Mustang GT coupe in Wimbledon white with red stripes and a bow on top.
Looking back, Teoh says, it was still the diamond that made the big first impression.
“It wasn’t until like 15 minutes later she was like ‘so, what’s with this key?’” he adds.
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
