The much-anticipated sale of the collection of the lead vocalist and pianist of Queen, Freddie Mercury, had a hugely exciting first night, with the ‘white-glove’ sale bringing in a total of £12.2 million against a presale estimate of £4.8-7.2 million. The collection comes from Mercury’s Kensington home, Garden Lodge, which he left to his ex-partner and long-term friend Mary Austin after his death in 1991. Over the next few days, there will be a total of 6 sales of Mercury’s personal effects.

Before heading to the auction block, a highlights exhibition of the sale contents toured Hong Kong, New York, Lost Angeles, and London, with an astonishing 140,000 visitors queuing up to see the objects at Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries over the past month. In equally unusual fashion, the auction kicked off with auctioneer Oliver Barker leading a rendition of We Will Rock You. It then took four and a half hours to sell the 59 lots, with Barker describing the atmosphere as “electric”.

While the auction did include fine art, such as paintings by Eugene von Blaas and James Jacques Joseph Tissot, as well as prints by Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, it was the objects which had been worn or used by Mercury that were most fiercely fought over. His silver snake bangle, worn in the music video for one of Queen’s most popular songs, Bohemian Rhapsody (1975), sailed past its high estimate of £9,000 to sell for £550,000 (before fees), while a Wurlitzer jukebox which Mercury had had in his kitchen, sold for more than 20 times its low estimate at £320,000 (before fees). But it was Mercury’s baby grand Yamaha piano – on which he had written Don’t Stop Me Now, Somebody to Love and Bohemian Rhapsody – that was the top selling lot of the auction, selling for £1.4 million. Draft lyrics were also sold, including an early version of Bohemian Rhapsody, as well as his outfits – a crown and cloak designed for the Magic tour of 1986 sold for £635,000.

Carey Wallace and Sarah Hodgson, who catalogued his costume collection for sale, talked about the various discoveries they made and described the experience as “just constant surprises the whole way through.” They added that “the discovery of that beautiful Japanese maple leaf jacket was a particular high point because we discovered it was the earliest piece of clothing in the collection. We found photographs of Freddie wearing it in July 1970, so it’s literally just when Queen became Queen”. Indeed, Mercury’s collection of Japanese art is so extensive that it has its own dedicated online sale, featuring the numerous woodblock prints, books, furniture, and outfits that relate to Japanese culture.

The sale opened with Barker reading a letter Sir Elton John had sent to Sotheby’s for the auction, in which he writes “I miss Freddie to this day. He was a wonderful friend, more full of love and life than any I’ve ever met.” The auction included a Cartier onyx and diamond ring given to Freddie by Elton John, which sold for £273,000, nearly 70 times its estimate. But not all friends of Mercury were so positive about the sale. Queen’s lead guitarist Brian May described how the auctions were “too sad” for him to think about.

This is not the first time Sotheby’s have sold the collection of an iconic musical celebrity. In 2016, they sold David Bowie’s collection. David Macdonald, Sotheby’s head of single owner sales, drew parallels between the two sales: “obviously with Bowie, that was an exquisite capsule collection, just fine art and classic superb design. This is everything…memorabilia but also things that show him [Mercury] as a serious collector in his own right.”  Macdonald added that Mercury had no interest in buying contemporary art, but instead was “in that Victorian collecting tradition—buying the best bits of furniture, the best bits of silver, the best bits of porcelain. Combined with things that simply caught his eye, he was definitely a shopper as well as a collector.”

The rest of Mercury’s collection will be sold over the next few days. Sotheby’s have also released a publication relating to the collection, featuring interviews with various experts including Sir Tim Rice, Dame Zandra Rhodes, Peter Freestone, and costume designer Doana Moesely.