It is a historically significant piece of memorabilia yet morbid at the same time.
The copy of John Lennon’s album Double Fantasy that Lennon signed for his killer, Mark David Chapman, just five hours before the shooting is up for sale for $1.5 million.
The sale is being handled by Moments in Time who also handled its sale in 1999. The price is not shown on the page for the album but has been confirmed to ABC Radio.
Chapman was waiting outside the Dakota, the home of Lennon and Yoko Ono, on the evening of December 8, 1980. At about 5:30, Lennon and Ono left their building to go to the Record Plant Studio to mix the song Walking on Thin Ice. Chapman approached Lennon, along with a couple of other autograph seekers, and John signed the cover of Double Fantasy, which had been released three weeks earlier, with his name and “80”.
Around 10:50, Lennon and Ono returned to the Dakota and Chapman shot him in the back with five hollow point bullets.
At some point either during the earlier encounter or at the time of the murder, Chapman must have put his signed copy of Double Fantasy behind a flower planter and it was found by a lifelong Lennon fan. That fan turned the album over to authorities who used it in the trial of Chapman before returning it to its new owner.
In 1999, Moments in Time helped the fan sell the album which brought $150,000. The new owner sold it again in 2010 for $850,000.
Bob Zafian, the agent for Moments in Time that is handling the sale, said “We are very excited to bring such a historically significant piece to the market. I have never come across a piece with such provenance; police reports, fingerprint documentation, letters from the District Attorney, it goes on and on.”
