London, UK (September 8, 2026)—Microphones and more will hit the auction block in early October when Propstore Auction holds its Music Memorabilia event in London. While typical music auction items like rare guitars, lyric sheets, clothes, test pressings and nicknacks will also be up for bid, the sale will include items from classic rock producers George Martin and Reinhold Mack.
The Propstore Auction event will take place October 1 and 2, with bidding via online and phone, starting at 3 PM GMT / 10 AM EST.
Audio pros who love the Beatles will no doubt eyeball an RIAA Gold album award given to George Martin for Paul McCartney’s 1982 solo album Tug Of War (Estimate: £2,000 – £4,000), but even more notable will be a microphone originally used to record The Beatles live at the Cavern Club on September 5, 1962.
According to the listing, the Reslo RBT/L Microphone (Estimate: 4,000 – £8,000), the band was filmed at The Cavern for a Granada TV news story on August 22 that year, but the audio was deemed unusable, so engineer Peter Noblett was sent back to the club on September 5 to record the band again, capturing audio that was later dubbed in before the film was aired in November.
For many, however, it will be the 43 items from a special sub auction, The Reinhold Mack Collection, that garner the most interest. Across his 50-plus year career, the German producer has produced and/or engineered Queen, The Rolling Stones, ELO, Billy Squier, Sparks, Meat Loaf, Extreme, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Sweet and dozens more.
Focusing mostly on items related to Queen, the auction’s Mack offerings include a Yamaha C3 grand piano; dozens of pages of handwritten items; and even stuffed animals, but of particular note are a pair of significant microphones.
Chief among them is an AKG C414 EB large-diaphragm condenser mic (Estimate: £40,000 – £80,000) used to record Freddie Mercury’s vocals on Queen’s The Game, Hot Space, The Works and A Kind of Magic albums as well as his own Mr. Bad Guy solo venture.
The vintage microphone contains a brass CK12 capsule and comes in its original Sennheiser carry bag, along with a red XLR cable that the auction listing notes “shows light marks from studio use and retains a cigarette-smoke odor.”
Propstore adds that the mic can be spotted in the studio-shot music video for 1985’s “One Vision.”
Given the broad number of classic rock artists Mack worked with, it’s inevitable that favorite microphones of his would be used time and again on multiple projects—and such is the case with a Neumann U 47 FET condenser microphone (Estimate: £20,000 – £40,000) that was variously used on sessions with the Stones, Queen, Marc Bolan, Deep Purple, ELO and others.
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For those who don’t have deep pockets but want to see such tools of the trade, many of the items will be publicly exhibited prior to the event at the Cumberland Hotel September 24-27 in London. The auction itself will be held online at PropstoreAuction.com.