Musician's guitar collection sells for £18k

Auctioneer Alexander Clement was impressed with the collection and the prices paid for the guitars

A collection of guitars that belonged to a popular musician has been sold for £18,000.

Neil Jackson, from Shrewsbury, was part of various bands throughout his life, including Wolverhampton swing band, the Oscar York Band.

The collection, sold at Halls Fine Art in Shrewsbury, included electric, acoustic and electro-acoustic guitars, spanning from 1914 to 2012.

The top price was for a Gretsch 1959 Double Anniversary hollow-bodied electric guitar with a case, which sold for £2,100.

The collection included multiple Gretsch guitars

The collection also included a 1961 Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean electric guitar, and a 1972 Fender Mustang electric bass guitar.

Mr Jackson died in 2020, aged 73.

He taught himself to play the guitar aged 14, and began singing in a school group called the Tradewinds.

He then joined the Oscar York Band, in which his uncle played the keyboard, before the pair formed Tailormade in the 1990s. Mr Jackson was a singer and guitarist, playing pop and swing music.

Following the popularity of 40s music, new band Moonlight Serenade was formed to play music from the Glenn Miller era.

Auctioneer Alexander Clement said he was like a "child in a sweet shop" when cataloguing the guitars.

"It was a really interesting collection," he said.

"Neil was very well known in the area as a talented musician who played in a number of bands during his lifetime."