Most Expensive Musical Instruments Sold at Auction (All Time)
Source:
Wikipedia
Key Findings
🏆
Duport Stradivarius Cello (1711) leads in Auction Price (Million USD) with 20 in 2020.
📅
2008 recorded the highest combined total across all categories.
↔️
Gap in 2020: Duport Stradivarius Cello (1711) is 20.8× larger than Eric Clapton Stratocaster Blackie (1956).
About This Dataset
Most Expensive Musical Instruments Sold at Auction (All Time)
Musical instruments ranked by hammer price at public auction in millions of USD. The 1721 Lady Blunt Stradivarius violin sold for $15.9 million at Tarisio auction in 2011 — the highest price ever paid for a musical instrument, setting a record at the time by nearly double. Stradivarius instruments dominate the upper echelon of instrument auction records due to their extraordinary tonal qualities and scarcity, with fewer than 650 surviving examples.
Analysis
Duport Stradivarius Cello (1711) heads the table on 20, ahead of Vieuxtemps Guarneri Violin (1741) (16) and Lady Blunt Stradivarius Violin (1721) (15.9) in Auction Price (Million USD) in 2020. 19.0 separates the highest figure (20) from the lowest (0.96). First and second are separated by 4, so the leader sits inside the field rather than apart from it. Only 3 of the 8 reach even half the leader's figure (10 or more).
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Wikipedia
- Coverage
- 8 entities · 2000–2020 (8 years) · 8 observations
- Measure
- Auction Price (Million USD)
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values use the measure and unit named on this page. Consult the dataset description and cited source for coverage, definitions and any unit conversions. Displayed values may be rounded for readability.
- Missing years are left empty rather than estimated — no interpolation, no carrying a previous year forward.
- Change is measured between the first and last year in which an entity actually reported a value, so a series that starts late is not penalised for the years before it existed.
- The compound annual rate is (last ÷ first)^(1 ÷ years) − 1, using those same two reported years.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2020.
- An entity that reported nothing in the latest year is still listed — it follows the ranked entities in the table rather than being dropped.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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