The Beatles 1966 Shea Stadium NY Concert Poster, Newly Found Unrestored Condition. ...

Description

THE CROWN JEWEL THAT DIDN'T NEED ANY POLISHING

The Beatles 1966 Shea Stadium NY Concert Poster, Newly Found Unrestored Condition. An original cardboard window card advertising John, Paul, George and Ringo on their last-ever tour appearing at New York's Shea Stadium on Tuesday, August 23, 1966. This poster remains the king of the hobby and world-record holder for any price ever paid for a concert poster at auction, $150,000. Heritage got that result last fall, tying our 1953 Hank Williams poster record-holder at that amount.

Unlike previous specimens Heritage has sold, this Beatles Shea poster remains untouched by conservation experts, being sold "as-is" because it's simply in great shape at 56 years old. Not flawless, but in solid enough condition that no repair work or restoration was needed, and seeing the pictures, we're sure you'll agree.

Credibility is everything with an auction house, and I will stake the reputation of my 50-year career in the music business that these Beatles Shea Stadium concert posters, the holy grail of the hobby, have emerged from hiding one-by-one over the last two and a half years, surprising us each & every time. The consignors are simply reacting to the strong market for this poster and concert posters in general, and deciding now is the time to sell. What amazes me the most is that for the fifth time, our consignor is someone who owns no other concert posters. Not a poster collector, not a dealer, not an investor; just an average Joe who's sat on their poster for decades, not knowing the value of what they had.

So go ahead, grab that stack of Bibles and I'll take the oath: In each and every case, we had no advance knowledge that another one was coming. These sellers are not strategists, flippers or dealers trying to time the market; I've personally gotten to know each consignor, and they're truly just everyday people looking to cash in, for something they usually obtained for free. And it was always after the previous auction had concluded. Part of the credit has to go to Heritage's massive PR and marketing machine at work, reaching every nook and cranny in America - and the world.

Most collectors fully accept repair work and restoration on their concert posters, if done skillfully. But a certain small segment prefers to just hold out for unrestored pieces. Such is the case with this Beatles Shea specimen... it's pretty glorious that nothing's been done to it at all. It's not perfect, but that's fine because every molecule is 56 years old. And yeah, our resto expert could have taken this and tweaked a few things, but why bother?

Even though we're the experts, we're just as surprised as you are, because the hobby's never seen anything quite like this. It's clearly a domino effect in action, and yet each time we've rightfully said, "Well, that's probably the last one for a few years." To refresh, we sold the first one in November 2019 for $125,000, the second one in April 2020 for a then-world-record price of $137,500, the third in November 2020 for $106,250, and the fourth one in November 2021 for the new-world-record price of $150,000. Logic dictates that this one should set a new record, but with auctions, it's often about which way the wind is blowing that day.

All of this fuss is about, of course, the most coveted poster in the hobby, and one of the most famous collectibles in any hobby: The Beatles 1966 Shea Stadium, New York original advertising concert poster, printed weeks before the show to goose sales for a concert that clearly wasn't selling out. Up until a couple of years ago, only 4-5 were known to exist in elite collections. Then Heritage got... well yeah, OK, we got lucky... and four consecutive, previously unknown specimens of the poster walked through our doors and would go up for sale over the following 24 months. It really is just that simple. And now we have a fifth, and in the best condition of any of them. It really is just that amazing.

An original Beatles Shea poster is still very rare, no question about it, because the demand for it is overwhelming. The collectors with the few existing specimens are clinging to them for dear life. None of the Shea posters we've carried have been re-consignments by previous auction winners.

As we've stated before, "The Beatles" and "Shea Stadium" are two sets of couplets that go together in pop culture like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers up through Jay-Z and Beyonce. Not only world-changing music, but entertainment history was made at Shea by the Fabs in 1965 and '66, and it's easy to see why: by stepping on stage at Shea, the Beatles faced an audience that probably exceeded all of their 279 appearances at Liverpool's Cavern Club combined - all in one night.

For their first appearance there in 1965, no advertising materials were needed. Word of mouth alone was enough to sell the place out 10 times over. Once New York DJs started mentioning it on the air, promoter Sid Bernstein just sat back and watched the ticket money roll in. Who needed to spend money on advertising? Concert posters were just an advertising expense back then, despite collectors' love for them today. They weren't created frivolously in the 1960's; they were produced only if needed.

Bernstein did, however, take advantage of the situation in '65 by creating a small B&W 'marquee-style' poster and handbill that promoted several other shows he had coming up. Just plain, B&W and no great shakes, although it represented a lot.

Well, 1966 was a whole 'nother story. He needed a sign all over NYC and surrounds that would get peoples' attention and sell tickets.

While relatively simple and straightforward in presentation, at the same time this 1966 poster is a masterwork of charisma, color, type fonts, our heroes' faces and, of course, rarity. How many did Sid have printed up? Nobody knows. A couple hundred is a good guess, with a range ultimately of anywhere from 100 to 500. We just have to remember that in the 1960's, nobody saved anything (that wasn't psychedelic). Why would they want to save this piece of cardboard? It didn't have a unique photo of the Fab Four... just their current standard publicity shot. So what's the big deal? Besides, the boys were certainly returning again in 1967, and then '68, and then '69...

Not.

That's right; another thing nobody knew is that this was the Beatles' last hurrah. Within a week of this concert, it would be impossible to ever see them live in concert again (rooftop filmmaking aside). It would all end in San Francisco six nights later, and a page would then be turned that nobody on earth except the four men from Liverpool wanted to see turned.

But first, there was the Big Apple and getting butts into those 55,000 seats. We don't know what promoter Bernstein did with radio and newspaper ads, but we sure know about this poster. It was likely stapled to telephone poles, fences, record-store walls, subway stations and anyplace around Manhattan that would gather the most eyeballs. Young eyeballs. Pop music was still a young person's game at this point. Parents were relegated to dropping their kids off at the stadium and patting them on the head for wanting to see the "yeah, yeah, yeah" quartet. Only later would everyone realize that the lads were making revolutionary rock-music history that would have tremendous influence well into the next century.

It wasn't too long before promoter Bernstein realized how iconic, and marketable, his concert-poster image was. Thus began the trickle, which turned to a flow, which eventually turned to a tidal wave, of limited-edition lithographs, reproductions, signed editions, bootlegs, pirates, knock-off's... just pick your term. The sheer scope and variety of "Beatles Shea 1966" concert posters out there in eBay-land is staggering, and sometimes humorous. I like the one with a Dezo Hoffman shot of the group from 1963... really? They had just put out an album with "Tomorrow Never Knows," and the pirates couldn't do any better than a photo from the "I Want to Hold Your Hand" picture sleeve?

In 1966, promoter Bernstein had to pull out all the stops. The world had grown weary of Beatlemania, the band had experienced a rough time of it overseas, everyone was getting tired of the fans' screaming, and worst of all, John Lennon's "We're more popular than Jesus now" remark had exploded in the media in July, directly impacting ticket sales for this August concert. Although the Beatles were still creating fantastic music - many fans & reviewers now consider their summer 1966 album Revolver their greatest ever, even better than Sgt. Pepper - ticket sales were not robust at many stops on this tour, which would end up being their last. The upcoming hippie ethos, which would completely dominate pop culture for the next few years, had started to seep its way in. So... Shea '66 was anything but a sellout.

So what's a promoter to do? Market and advertise, of course. So promoter Bernstein went to the Murray Poster Printing Company there in New York and had an advertising poster (aka window card) designed, printed up and distributed, to try to increase sales.

I've been a serious poster collector for over 25 years, so between that and Heritage's enormous reach, naturally I get lots of phone calls from strangers. Honest to goodness: When somebody starts to say, "I've got this old Beatles concert poster, and...", I get bored. Immediately. My eyes roll and my goal switches to finishing the call as quickly and politely as I can. I'd much rather they have said "this old Rolling Stones poster" or something. Why? Because with Beatles concert posters, they're always fake. ALWAYS! They're inevitably calling me about one of the million boots out there. I usually say, "Does it have the year on there?" And then when they say, "Yes, sure, of course!" So I'll respond with something like, "So what do you think of the Braves' chances again this year?"

None of these posters needed the year on there... they were created to have a lifespan of six or eight weeks. When you're standing in Times Square in the middle of summer looking at a poster, you know what year it is. All you needed to know was that the event was on Tuesday, August 23. (However, it should be pointed out that even to this day, probably about 5% of genuine concert posters do have the year on there, for whatever reason. And there are also many Beatles Shea boots out there now without the year, trying to mimic the original.)

From the perspective of a serious collector, any poster printed after the last Beatle said to the crowd, "Thank you, goodnight!" is worthless. Any poster printed before they stepped foot on that stage is the big prize. The former is nothing but a merch piece, created in huge numbers to be sold for money; the latter is an advertising poster, created in tiny quantities to be thrown away the moment it couldn't be used to sell tickets anymore. Collectors ignore the former and go bananas for the latter.

So I've been lucky enough to have thousands of rare posters pass through my hands over the last quarter-century, and I had several of my own 1961-62 original Beatles Liverpool concert posters on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio for the first decade they were open (1995-2005). But up until our first Beatles Shea '66 arrived at Heritage's offices in Dallas in 2019, I had never, ever seen or held one in person before. That is just silly. And the world's biggest private dealer of high-end concert posters told us that it's the only big poster that has never passed through his hands, ever. And that he's never even been offered one, at any price. It truly is the holiest of the grails.

This treasured gem measures 18 x 23 7/8" and grades to a very strong, unrestored Very Good Plus condition. COA from Heritage Auctions.

Pete Howard
Director, Concert Posters
Heritage Auctions

More Information: We initially had this poster graded Near Mint Minus after examining its front, but needed to tough-love it down to Very Good Plus after examining its verso. Almost all the flaws are on the poster's back. The only visually apparent damage on the front is the light brown water stain down along the bottom edge, running about 7" in length from the board's left edge over to under the "K" in "Rockefeller." There's another extremely minor one of 1 ½" on the very edge underneath "49th-50th." All other flaws are extremely minor in nature, and usually visible only if you tilt the poster at an angle to the light and scrutinize. There's a 1 ½" surface crease in the black underneath George's white collar. There's a similar surface crease in the extreme lower left part of the band photo, going over Paul's fingers. There's a very slight surface ding on the "R" in "Star." (None of these even come close to breaking color.)

The top two corners both have very light ¼" corner creases, just on the tips and nowhere near the yellow. There are two very slight, harmless edge flaws at the poster's top. The first is about 1" over from the board's left edge; the second is straight up from the first "E" in "Bernstein." The lower left corner also has that very soft, gentle ¼" tip crease, and the lower right corner has a tiny bit of tip damage which has pushed the white paper up just a tad; you could even say it's fraying just a tiny bit. There's also a surface crease in that area of about 1 ½" which intersects the printer's address, but barely detectable. Really splitting hairs here, there's a one-inch benign barely-crease from the poster's bottom left edge over to the "S" in "Singer." In the same area, there's a very insignificant 2 ¼" vertical crease running up the edge from the corner.

There's a tiny black surface blemish above the "R" in "Record" at the bottom; hard to tell if it's a dirt speck or printer's flaw. What we do know are printer's anomalies are the one-inch slight black line above John's shoulder, and a very light horizontal line which runs all the way across the poster, to varying visibility, through John & Ringo's hair, Paul's shoulder, and even a tad in George's hair but which luckily disappears in George's face. More tiny printer's flaws – which are not considered damage – involve the "23" in the concert's date: a slight white blemish above the "2," a white speck on the "2" and a tiny, brighter white blemish to the right of the "3." And as always, general toning throughout.

On the poster's verso, there is some "tape lifting" in the middle area along with darker stain marks of some kind of light, sticky residue. The two top corner areas have little pieces of actual tape that measure one inch by one-half inch each. And in the upper right edge area, somebody wrote a street address in pencil.


Heritage Auctions provides as much information as possible but strongly encourages in-person inspection. Condition statements are offered as general guidance only, not as complete representations of fact, and do not constitute a warranty or assumption of liability by Heritage. Some condition issues may not be noted but may be visible in the photos, which are considered part of the condition report. Lots estimated at $1,000 or less are not de-framed for inspection, and we may be unable to provide additional details for lots valued under $500. Heritage does not guarantee the condition of frames and is not liable for damage to frames, glass/acrylic coverings, original boxes, display accessories, or artwork that has shifted in the frame. All lots are sold "AS IS" under our Terms & Conditions of Auction.