Final Auction Price
*Final prices include buyers premium
$6,000.00
Starting bid: $1.00
This lot will be accompanied by a Letter of Provenance attesting to the fact that it resided in the historic Early '66 Time Capsule Collection one of the most exciting and important concert poster discoveries of the past 20 years.
We're pleased to offer the collecting community the very FIRST example of this Grateful Dead poster to ever appear at public auction.
Many a big time collector has lusted after the Peace Rock posters they've always been perceived as important. What makes this piece BIG is of course that it is a VERY rare piece of Grateful Dead. The Charlatans and Great Society really round out this piece as being an early Bay Area music classic.
This poster truly has one foot in the past and one foot in the future. Peter Bailey may have done the calligraphy on this one but it also looks like a collaboration with someone else as the large more primitive and very cool lettering at center and bottom doesn’t appear to be Peter’s which was “Zen Calligraphy neat”. The great early peace signs are totally cool. We don’t know the exact evolution of the peace sign per se but this is before the convention became sort of universal.
It’s very 50’s looking especially with the Russ "The Moose" Syracuse MC image and his “hep DJ” look and it’s a union printed poster. There was a great degree of cooperation between some of the union printers and the politicos... the unions and democrats being super pro-labor at that point almost communist in ideology.
The highly overused term "rare" actually applies to this piece. Probably just a handful of these survived and this one is in excellent condition. We have heard whispers of 2 or 3 specimens that have quietly traded privately among elite collectors over the past 50 years but this is the very first specimen to be made available to the collecting public at large through auction. If you are a serious GD collector or you really focus on big deal early Haight-Ashbury hippie culture material this is a must have prize.
Estimate: Due to this being the very first time this ultra rarity has been offered at auction ascertaining value is something best left to the marketplace here and now. As guidance we look at recent auction results for other early Dead posters that while not as rare as the lot offered here are certainly suitable for comparison. Specifically we note a Grateful Dead Troupers Hall poster from 3/25/66 that realized $27 720 on 2/13 and an Grateful Dead Appeal 3 poster from 1/14/66 that realized $29 900 on 2/17.
Poster – Peace Rock III
Grade – PAE Excellent 73
Bands/Bill – Grateful Dead Charlatans Great Society Billy Moses
Venue – Harmon Gym Univ Cal
City – Berkeley CA
Date – 5/7/66
Dimensions – 14” x 22”
Printing – OP-1 Original Pre-Concert First Printing
Series/Promoter – Democratic Congressional Candidates
Condition Details - 100% Original with no restoration. A 2" tear and a 1/ " tear bottom edge tack holes one ripped top right paper loss bottom left toning foxing handling light tape pull in the bottom right below the M and a nick on the top edge an 1 1/4" from the right. View the detailed high res photo of this lot. Click on the thumbnail photo to see an enlarged photo. Click a second time on the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the enlarged photo. A super high res image with every millimeter will now be clearly displayed. For a personalized eyewitness examination call 410-464-6180 11:00 am to 6:00pm eastern.
*****This poster is available for inspection at our gallery by appointment. *****
*A 20% Buyers Premium will be added to the final hammer price of this lot.*
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