Bad news, creeps: Unless your bank account is nearly $350,000 lower today than it was yesterday, you probably just missed your chance to own a piece of rock history. As reported by the BBC, Kurt Cobain’s iconic green (?) cardigan—the one he wore for MTV Unplugged in 1993—has just been sold at an auction for $334,000. The sweater, which is “stained” and “cigarette-burned,” had apparently “not been cleaned since [Cobain] last wore it,” but it’s unclear when exactly that was. Cobain died a few months after Nirvana taped its performance on MTV Unplugged, but he very well could have washed the sweater immediately after the show and then worn it again on some other day, which would reduce some of its magic. Then again, you don’t become one of the patron saints of grunge by washing your cardigans.
If this all sounds familiar, the sweater previously went on sale back in 2015. At the time, auction house Julien’s (which also ran this more recent auction) expected it to gor for somewhere between $40,000 and $60,000. It has probably collected a whole lot more smells since then, and we have no idea if some other rock icons have worn it while performing legendary MTV Unplugged shows, but there could be any number of reasons for the huge jump in value. Maybe this vaguely green color of cardigan is back in style, and it’s totally irrelevant that Kurt Cobain’s stains and cigarette burns are still present?
Anyway, BBC says Julien’s also sold Cobain’s custom Fender Mustang guitar for $340,000, despite actually having a practical purpose that a dirty sweater does not have. Then again, as we noted earlier in this story, things like this tend to get purchased by creeps.
