More about: The Beatles
One of the most startling and unique items in music history is up for sale again.
The album signed by John Lennon for Mark Chapman, just hours before Chapman shot Lennon, is being sold by current owner Gary Zimet.
The news of the records sale also happens to coincide with the 32nd anniversary of the Beatles star's tragic death.
John Lennon stopped to sign the copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman as he left his apartment building in New York on December 8, 1980.
Photographer Paul Goresh was also outside the building at the same time a took a snap of Lennon signing the record with Chapman in the background. The picture has since become infamous.
When Lennon returned to his apartment five hours later with Yoko Ono, Chapman shot him in the back four times.
Chapman took out a copy of book Catcher In The Rye and waited for police to arrive, and the signed copy of Double Fantasy was dropped in a flower planter in the confusion.
It was picked up by a doorman, who handed it to the police as evidence. The record was returned to the doorman once police had finished with it.
The signed record comes with the provenance unlike any other musical artefact.
Included with it are police reports, letters from the district attorney and, gruesomely, Chapman's forensically enhanced finger prints.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their bed-in in Amsterdam
This is the third time the record has been sold.
In 1999 the man who first found the record sold it, and it changed hands again several years later.
While Moments In Time's website lists the price as being available only on request, in the past it came with a reserve price of $525,000.
Below: musicians influenced by John Lennon and The Beatles
More about: The Beatles