London, UK (September 8, 2026)—Microphones and more will hit the auction block in early October when Propstore Auction holds a Music Memorabilia event in London. While typical music auction items like rare guitars, lyric sheets, clothes, test pressings and nicknacks will be up for bid, the sale is notable for including items related to classic rock producers George Martin and Reinhold Mack.
The Propstore Auction event will take place October 1 and 2, with bidding via online and phone, starting at 3 PM GMT / 10 AM EST.
Audio pros who love the Beatles will no doubt eyeball an RIAA Gold album award given to producer George Martin for Paul McCartney’s 1982 solo album Tug Of War (Estimate: £2,000 – £4,000), but even more notable will be a microphone originally used to record The Beatles live at the Cavern Club in Liverpool on September 5, 1962.
According to the listing for a Reslo RBT/L Microphone (Estimate: £4,000 – £8,000), the band was filmed at The Cavern Club in Liverpool for a Granada TV news story on August 22 that year, but the audio was deemed unusable. Audio engineer Peter Noblett was sent back to the club on September 5 to record the band again, using two microphones—including the one up for auction. The audio captured that day was later dubbed in before the film was aired in November.
Also of note in the auction is The Reinhold Mack Collection, a special subset of 43 items belonging to the German producer/engineer. Across his 50-plus year career, Mack has produced and/or engineered Queen, The Rolling Stones, ELO, Billy Squier, Sparks, Meat Loaf, Extreme, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Sweet and dozens more.
The Mack offerings are focused mostly on items related to Queen, including a Yamaha C3 grand piano played by Freddie Mercury on many of the band’s albums, dozens of pages of handwritten items and even stuffed animals, but of particular note are a pair of significant microphones.
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Chief among them is an AKG C414 EB large-diaphragm condenser mic (Estimate: £40,000 – £80,000) used to record Mercury’s soaring vocals on Queen’s The Game, Hot Space, The Works and A Kind of Magic albums as well as his own Mr. Bad Guy solo venture.
The AKG microphone contains a brass CK12 capsule and comes in a Sennheiser carry bag for some reason, along with a red XLR cable that the auction listing notes “shows light marks from studio use and retains a cigarette-smoke odor.” Propstore adds that the mic can be spotted in the studio-shot music video for 1985’s “One Vision.”
Given the broad number of classic rock artists Mack has worked with, it’s inevitable that he would use the same favorite mics on multiple projects—and that’s the case with a Neumann U 47 FET condenser microphone up for bid (Estimate: £20,000 – £40,000) that came in handy for sessions with the Stones, Queen, Marc Bolan, Deep Purple, ELO and others. Much as the AKG mic comes in a Sennheiser bag, this Neumann microphone comes in a Shure-branded leather pouch.
Many of the items will be publicly exhibited prior to the event at the Cumberland Hotel September 24-27 in London.
The auction itself will be held online at PropstoreAuction.com.
