You can’t help but get “Good Vibrations” when you unlock the door to the largest and most valuable collection of Beach Boys memorabilia in the world – which happens to be tucked away in the Fortress storage facility in Miami.
“When we came here and saw this collection it was like opening up a treasure chest,” said Jimi Mastronardi of The Fame Bureau, an auction house that will take the memorabilia on a worldwide tour beginning April 15.
The rare collection includes sheet music, handwritten lyrics, and original records for more than 150 Beach Boys songs including “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Sloop John B” and more.
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The collection also includes unreleased songs, like “Marilyn,” about Brian Wilson’s first wife.
“It’s not even published, but we have all the music and the lyrics for that song,” Mastronardi said.
The trove also includes the Beach Boys’ first royalty check (for $990), and personal photos that were never released to the public.
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Baruch Halpern of Bal Harbour represents the group from Miami selling the collection, which has been hidden away in storage facilities for 18 years. The auction house says it’s worth between $6 million and $10 million.
“We’ve just hit the 50th anniversary,” Halpern said, “so it’s really an appropriate time to bring this collection out to the market.”
Halpern's group is doing so following years of legal battles over the collection.
"At the moment I have legal restrictions in discussing this. However, the important point is that prior to our involvement this collection has traveled from warehouse to warehouse, mostly in Florida, and it is of public record that the ownership was involved in legal action over the years,” Halpern said in a statement. “Our group has brought all parties together and cleared title so that we can bring this great collection to auction and have this collection take its true place in history."
The British newspaper The Independent reported that the surviving members of the Beach Boys have confirmed their knowledge of the sale, but have declined to comment.
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Mastronardi called the memorabilia “a part of history.”
“This collection needs not to be in a storage unit,” he said.
The collection will be auctioned off as a whole. Halpern and Mastronardi both hope that after the auction, it’ll end up in a museum.
For more information, see www.famebureau.com.
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Photo Credit: NBC 6 South Florida