Rare Autographs Sell For Thousands at Colwyn Bay Auction

Books filled with autographs by rock and roll legends - which were used to pay an overblown shop debt - have gone under the hammer at a Colwyn Bay auction.

The collection, which features some of the hottest acts of the sixties including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Cliff Richard and The Shadows, were sold at auctioneers Rogers Jones yesterday.

Despite being estimated to sell between £200-£300, the collection went for a staggering £3,500.

All the signatures in the books were collected by cameraman John Rees when he worked on the set of Thank Your Lucky Stars - ITV's rival to Juke Box Jury which ran between 1961-1966.

After running up a big bill at a shop down the road from the studio, he used the albums as collateral to pay his debts.

The vendor, until recently living in North Wales but now living in France, said: “We owned a delicatessen in Teddington and John Rees was a regular customer but often short of cash and he had goods on tic. He gave me the autograph albums in payment of a large bill.

“The other autographs on our headed paper we got when the celebrity concerned was shopping in the delicatessen, which was located close to the studios and some others we got when we made deliveries to the studios.”

The Beatles made their first networked TV performance on Thank Your Lucky Stars in January 1963, when they mimed their second single From Me To You.

They signed John Rees’s autograph book on February 17, 1963, after their second appearance on the show when they mimed Please Please Me for the cameras.

The Rolling Stones made their first UK television appearance on the show on July 7 that year, when they mimed Come On.

Their autographs, including that of Brian Jones, appear on a sheet of paper from a notepad dated 1964.

Other autographs include pop icons like Gerry and the Pacemakers, Helen Shapiro, Bobby Vee, Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, Cliff Richard and The Shadows, Johnny Leyton, Rolf Harris, The Crickets, Bobby Rydell, Rosemary Squires, David Jacobs (Of Juke Box Jury Fame), Joe Brown and many more.

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