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The instrument, found strapped to the body of Wallace Hartley after he drowned along with 1,500 others in the disaster in 1912, was sold at Titanic specialist auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes, Southwest England.

The violin played by the bandmaster of the Titanic to calm passengers as it sank sold at auction for $1.45 million or 1.06 million Euros today, Saturday; this is a world record price for memorabilia from the doomed antique. "We're absolutely overjoyed," Christine Aldridge, a spokeswoman for the auction house said.

Of course, I'd be overjoy too if someone is willing to buy an antique for such an amount! According to Aldridge, "It was sold to a UK collector who was bidding by telephone. The whole sale only took about 10 minutes." She said the final price including premiums paid to the auction house was £1,050,030.

The instrument carries an inscription from the 33-year-old's fiancee Maria Robinson to mark their engagement and was on sale with its leather luggage case, initialed W.H.H, in which it was found. Now I question this part because how did the violin get inside the case when Hartley was 'supposedly' playing it with his band members before he died.

For many years, the violin was believed lost, but it was found in the attic of a house in Northwest England in 2006, prompting a debate about its authenticity, which experts only recently resolved. Bidding started at just £50 for the violin, but within a few minutes it had passed the previous world record of £220,000 for a Titanic piece as competition between four telephone bidders hotted up.

There were gasps from the 200 people at the auction house as the price reached £350,000 and then a tense silence as the battle for the instrument narrowed to two telephone bidders. Hartley's band played the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee" to try to calm passengers while they climbed into lifeboats as the Titanic sank beneath the icy waves in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg.

Hartley and his seven fellow band members all died after choosing to play on.

I've always been fascinated about the passion and drive that bidders have to buy items that used to be owned by usually a deceased person - at least, that's my view of it. If you ask me to come with you to a car auction, that's a different story. Personally, I feel they're not the same.

What do you all think?

http://www.infonubia.com/2013/10/titanic-memorabilia-auctioned-and-sold.html

It is touching, knowing the circumstances that led the owners heroic death.

Rogers210: It is touching, knowing the circumstances that led the owners heroic death.

That's right!