Outside of Harry Potter, the most famous round spectacles in the history of pop culture almost certainly belong to John Lennon.
While various pairs worn by the legendary Beatles musician have surfaced at auction before, including one which fetched more than $50,000 in a December 2024 charity auction, few match the provenance and lore attached to those crossing the auction block later this month at Propstore, which are estimated to sell for as much as $400,000.
This particular pair is traced back to Lennon’s “Lost Weekend,” an 18-month period of his life during which he was separated from Yoko Ono, drank, did copious amounts of drugs and completed three albums ("Mind Games," "Walls and Bridges," and "Rock n’ Roll").
Propstore explains Lennon wore the glasses in the midst of this period, on March 12, 1974, while he and Harry Nilsson drunkenly heckled the comedy team the Smothers Brothers at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles. A fight broke out and the duo were kicked out. During the altercation, Lennon lost his glasses, and Tommy Smothers’ wife recovered them.
Smothers was quoted in the book “Ticket to Ride” saying, "The heckling got so bad that our show was going downhill rapidly. No one cared because it was just happening anyway, but there was a scuffle going on, and we stopped the show. My wife ended up with Lennon's glasses because of the punches that were thrown.”
The glasses sold at Sotheby’s in 1987 and most recently at Christie’s in 2008, when they fetched $78,467. The Christie’s lot description also attributes them to multiple events in 1973 and 1974, including being worn on the cover of the 1973 single Mind Games.
The most ever paid for a pair of Lennon’s glasses was $183,000 for a pair originally given to the rock star in 1966 to prepare for his role in the movie “How I Won The War.” They were consigned by Ringo Starr’s former assistant.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.