Kurt Cobain's Fender sells for $100k

Nearly 15 years after Kurt Cobain's death, collectors are still willing to pay for fragments of the Nirvana star's life.

A Fender Mustang, which had been smashed by Cobain, has been sold at auction to a private collector for $100,000, according to the Associated Press.

The sale was confirmed 22 December by Jacob McMurray, senior curator at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, where the taped-up sunburst-finish Mustang was displayed for a time.

"It's a really cool-looking guitar because it's smashed and held together with duct tape and Kurt Cobain wrote on it," McMurray said.

The seller was Sluggo, of San Francisco punks The Grannies and Hullabaloo. Sluggo said he traded a working guitar for the smashed one during Nirvana's first US tour. Cobain wrecked the guitar onstage in New Jersey.

Few of Cobain's personal items have been made available for auction. The only other Cobain-owned guitar that has gone for a higher-price at public auction was a Mosrite Gospel Mark IV, sold for $131,000 in 2006.

Of the two Cobain-designed Fender Jag-Stangs, one (in red) remains with his widow Courtney Love. The blue prototype was given by Love to REM's Michael Stipe, and appears in REM's video (played by Peter Buck) for What's The Frequency, Kenneth?