A Hank Williams concert poster for the New Year’s Day show that he died en route to sold for $150,000 during Heritage’s Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Signature Auction on May 1-2, 2021. The poster set a world record for most expensive concert poster ever sold in an auction.

The bright yellow poster features an image of Williams alongside his name in bold red text above the advertisement “In the Biggest Jamboree of 1953.” One of only three known in existence, the poster beat the record that the Beatles set when their Shea Stadium poster from August 1966 sold for $137,500 at Heritage in April 2020.

“I’m pleasantly surprised but not shocked at all that this magnificent beast set a new world record,” Pete Howard, Consignment Director in Heritage's Entertainment & Music Memorabilia category, said. “It’s not often I use a term like ‘Smithsonian piece’ for a concert poster, but this is not only one of those, it’s probably the one. Really, if that museum called me and asked what concert poster they should put on their walls, I’d fly right past Elvis, Buddy Holly and the Beatles and tell them, ‘This one.’”

Williams was on his way to the concert at the Canton Memorial Auditorium in Ohio when he died of a heart attack in the backseat of a car. He was just 29 years old. The concert went on with his backing band, the Drifting Cowboys, along with other billed performers. This copy of the extremely rare poster was the first ever to reach the auction block.

The Hank Williams poster was part of the auction’s 1,350 lots that totaled $1.86 million in sales.

Throughout the auction, ten concert posters sold for over $10,000, with some going well beyond that mark. Top sellers included a 1966 Grateful Dead “Skeleton & Roses” signed by artist Stanley Mouse and graded CGC 9.6 sold for $84,375 and a Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane poster from Toronto 1967 shows brought $45,000.

Other music items included the Beatles’ 1966 Yesterday and Today album in original shrink wrap that realized $38,750. This is one of the most famous and notorious album covers, depicting the Fab Four wearing butcher smocks covered in raw mean and disassembled baby dolls. Clothing items in the auction included an Army suit that Elvis Presley wore during his military service that hammered for $21,250. A circa 1967 Deluxe Model Gibson Electric guitar from the estate of singer Trini Lopez closed at $22,500.