Sold at auction by Sotheby’s, the lock of hair more than tripled its pre-sale valuation.

A lock of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s hair has sold at London’s famous Sotheby’s auction house, for £35,000 (around $70,000AUD), more than tripling its estimated value of £10,000 ($20,000AUD). The blond curl, dating from 1791, is enclosed in a gilt locket, and was passed from the composer’s widow, Constanze, to the German conductor Karl Anschutz, before eventually being owned by British composer Arthur Sommervell. While the eventual price of this particular lock exceeded expectation, it is not the largest sum a lock of Mozart’s hair has sold for. In 2002 a similar lock reached a price of £38,240 – doubling its pre-sale estimate.

The lock of Mozart’s hair in its gilt case.

During the same auction a lock of Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair, accompanied by a printed invitation to the composer’s funeral in 1827, was also sold, but for substantially less than Mozart’s. The hair and invitation sold for just £8,124, although this did exceed the £2000 reserve price.