At the risk of being sappy...thought I'd share this. I sent him (the guy I gave the guitar to) a link to a video someone made of the auction collection at Julien's. He wrote: "That video made me a little sad. Walter’s most prized possessions without their owner/caretaker. At least, in this case, they’re going to folks who loved the artist and will cherish the instruments. My fingers are stubs from playing that guitar so much. The guitar tech was good at his job." To which I replied: Think of his collection more like a flower. While it was beautiful in it's day and gave much joy, it's time had passed. However, the seeds from the flower were allowed to scattered in the breeze and landed on new soil where they all could grow into flowers of their own. Instead of one large magnificent flower, we now have a field of flowers. All unique, each with it's own shape and color. You are one of those flowers.

@Moderator: D-Mod thanks!

Thanks! For me it was a special guitar, but for him it's almost a religious artifact. Plus I have trouble playing Strats - I love them and actually have a strat neck on my guitar (I build my own) but the way I hold and strum a guitar has me smacking into the pickup selector on strats unless it's all the way down. Which is fine, I guess, if I only want to use the bridge pickup.

@Moderator: D-Mod thanks! Yes, that's why I was drilling for details about it earlier - so I could give him a full story about the guitar's history when I gave it to him. And sorry - but what is SIR?

The blue Japanese Fender Strat (lot 502) is now in it's final home. I actually bought it for a friend of mine who is an excellent guitarist (much better than I am) and a massive Steely Dan fan. It was a surprise present and he had tears when I gave it to him and told him what it was. He was hit hard by Walter's death and this meant a lot to him. He said he went home and played Steely Dan songs on it for the next 5 hours straight. The guitar will be cherished! He remarked on how perfectly the guitar was set up and said it must be nice to have a guitar tech follow you around all day! I had played it a bit myself before I gave it to him and, like Bilbo and the ring, I found I was hard pressed to actually hand it over when the time came. It is a beautiful guitar and it plays very well. But it will be truly honored in his hands so it was the right thing to do. Wile I imagine a few of the guitars will wind up on someone's trophy wall, it sounds like many (most?) will be played and loved whether by pros or beginners.

Caveat: this was my first online auction and, in fact, my first auction period so some of my comments reflect that. Pre-auction: The catalog was great and searching/tags about as good as could be expected. I picked out some items that I thought might not go for budget-breaking amounts and added them to my watchlist. That was all pretty easy. Signing up as a bidder was pretty easy, although I had to not only give my credit card info online but send images of my driver’s license and credit card, which wasn’t a problem but seemed a bit excessive. Again – my first auction, but I certainly buy things online and never had anyone ask for that. Julien’s got all that approved pretty fast. Auction: really about as good as I could expect online. The video of the auctioneer, while not really adding anything functional to the process, really helped my to feel like I was there and connected so good for that. Bidding was easy both live and setting up max bids which was good because I did have to step away during one of the items auction that I was interested in. Other people have commented on the estimated pricing being way off and I also found that frustrating. A number of items I thought I might have a shot at ended up being way way more and just too much for me. I would have picked out a different watch list set if I had had a better idea of prices. I thought both auctioneers were entertaining each in their own way. Yes, it would have been great if maybe someone had given them “read this description and don’t shorten it” notes for the items because they obviously had no idea what each item was. Or told them to even just stick with the full descriptions as in the catalog. They missed calling out the important info (I think someone else mentioned them calling a Les Paul styled guitar just a Les Paul). Did that hurt the auction? No, because we all could read the descriptions and I’m sure all of us knew exactly what each item was. Still… it detracted from the overall “vibe”. Very quickly you realized that they were not “one of us” which is not unreasonable, of course, but it would have taken very little extra effort to make them sound more knowledgeable. So far Julien’s has seemed far more organized with the actual auction than the follow-up. I am 3,000 miles away and am having someone local pick it up for me. Scheduling a pickup time has been a little difficult. They are very nice, but they only want to communicate via email and I don’t think they check their email very often. A week after they took my money I’m still trying to set up a pickup time. First they told me to pick a time, and I did, and then a day later they said they were busy then. So I pick another time and then don't hear anything back all weekend. Don't tell me to just pick a time if there are entire days that you are already all booked please! Last one – and maybe this is just me not being familiar with auctions – I would have liked to have the prices that we were bidding reflect their commission as well. It was a fair amount of money added on and I had to constantly be transposing the prices in my head during the auction.

@Matthew Kerns Thank you! I did not know any of that and it really helps. I had taken a quick look at Instagram but there are over 200K photos tagged "coachella2015" (yikes!) and so far I can't see anything tagged with both Coachella and 'Dan - but this bears some more investigation now that I know that's the path I need to go down. Much appreciated.

Understood - thanks! Any info would be helpful and much appreciated. I'm probably way overthinking this but I just wish at least one of the pix from the show had this guitar in it.

@Moderator: D-Mod Awesome! That's what I was hoping for. Do you remember when he actually played it? Without a photo I just don't want to make claims for it that are not accurate. So like did he play it during the set on a song there just aren't any pictures for? Did he play it during the sound check for which I wouldn't expect there to be any pictures (and which would explain why it doesn't show up in the photos of the guitars onstage)? Did he play it backstage during warm up (which might be stretching it a bit to call it "stage played")? Something I didn't think of? I just want to be correct in what I say about it when I brag about my new toy (can't wait to actually get it!). Thanks!

No worries. I thought that was actually hilarious since I guess I did sign it "tia" and "tia" is also a name, so... my bad! I thought at first I found some photos of it but then realized that they were of him with one of his Sadowski's in heavy blue light. Easy to confuse at first if the headstock is cropped out. From all the pix I have found it looks like is stable on stage at Coachella included a light (natural?) Sadowski Tele, a red and a green Sadowski strats, a brown/fade Fender strat, and a yellow/red flame Ian Anderson Les Paul. There is one other on a stand that I haven't seen a pic with him playing that I can't quite make out - looks kind of Les Paul shaped but with a black pick-guard. The Paul he is seen playing has a white pick-guard. In any case it is definitely not a blue strat. In the auction the Anderson Paul (lot 27) and the brown Strat (lot 553) were also tagged as Coachella and you can see both of them in various pictures from the show. Does anyone know who compiled the history of the instruments that was used in the catalog? If I can't find a picture, I'd settle for finding out who said that it had been played there so I can ask them.

Hoping someone here could help out or suggest where I could go... I was lucky enough to win the blue strat item 502 https://www.juliensauctions.com/auctions/2019/Walter_Becker/Walter_Becker_Flipping_Book/270/ (because the ones I might have wanted more went right out of my price range). In the description it says that he played it onstage at Coachella. I've spent some time searching images, videos, even Facebook and Instagram postings from Coachella (although there are just too many social media posts to have gone through them all) and I don't see that guitar in any of the videos/photos. Perhaps he used it on the sound check, which probably doesn't have any photos? Any ideas or suggestions of either any evidence that he did indeed play it at Coachella or anyone I could ask about who said it had been played there in the first place? The only contacts I have at Julien's have not replied to my questions so far. Help! TIA