Where it all began

My involvement in being interested in all things ‘BEATLE’ started when I was six years old in 1964, my sister who was 13 at the time had pestered my mother for us to all go and see the Beatles live in Scarborough in the UK whilst we were on holiday in August of that year.

Unfortunately she was unable to get tickets to see them ‘live’, but instead bought us all tickets to see their new released film’ A Hard Days Night’ which had just come out at the cinema, so on the 9th August 1964 we all went to see this instead.

And so this gave me my first taste of the Beatles and I have been hooked ever since!

My sister was in the official Beatles fan club and when she left home in 1970 she gave me a few bits of Beatle memorabilia and this started me on my hobby of collecting any memorabilia relating to the Beatles.

My first Beatles piece was a rather insignificant cloth patch you could buy from the fan club with the Beatles name on it, I have a photo of me wearing the patch when I was about 6 years old, and I still have it today and I’m now 67!

In early 2021, I received an email from a fellow UK based Beatle collector, asking for some advice. After some back and forth, it turned out we were equally passionate and obsessive about collecting Beatles memorabilia! After just a few months of corresponding, we got on so well that I invited him to join me as a partner in Beatlebilia. Since then, Phil Harbour came on board with the Beatlebilia family and we’ve never looked back!

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read our book……?

In July 2023, Phil and I decided to write and publish a comprehensive memorabilia guide, which details all the many weird and wonderful pieces of Beatles memorabilia sold across the world during the 1960s.  It has been 25 years since the last memorabilia guide was published and so we believed the time was right for an up to date encyclopedia of 60s Beatles memorabilia.

So, we have spent the last 3 years researching, archiving, cataloguing and detailing over 1000 individual items of Beatles memorabilia and our book contains over 3000 images of the items.

The book is now in print and available to purchase from York Bookshop on the links below:-

Paperback

https://yorkbookshop.com/crafts-and-hobbies/748-beatlebilia-the-ultimate-beatles-memorabilia-reference-guide-paperback.html

Hardback

https://yorkbookshop.com/crafts-and-hobbies/749-beatlebilia-the-ultimate-beatles-memorabilia-reference-guide-hardback.html

The site is very much work in progress and if you have any information or photos of memorabilia that’s not listed or you have any further information that could add to what’s already listed please feel free to contact us as the more accurate we can make the website the more help it will be to all the Beatle collectors worldwide.

Check this out

My most impressive piece is this rare inflatable swim ring that was manufactured in 1965 to promote the Help film and original soundtrack and I believe that there are only about four examples of this item that still survive in collections.

It has always been an ambition of mine to catalogue, list and price as much of the known Beatles memorabilia that exists out there still today, and with the help and assistance of many of you Beatles collectors across the world here is the result, I hope you like it!

My thanks go to many people who although some I have never met have written various informative books over the years on the subject of Beatle’s memorabilia collecting which inspired and helped me put this reference centre together, so thank you Jeff Augsburger, Marty Eck, Rick Rann, Barbara Crawford, Hollis Lamon, Michael Stern, Joe Hilton, Greg Moore, Perry Cox etc, I couldn’t have done it without your knowledge but a special thanks must go to Mark Lewisohn for without his very informative and fantastic book ‘The Complete Beatles Chronicle’ I would not have been able to put together the concert ticket and concert poster section of the site.

I finally had the pleasure to meet and thank in person Mark Lewisohn and Jeff Augsburger at the 2014 New York Beatlesfest.

In 2019 I happened to stumble across a brand new book on Beatles memorabilia collecting called NEMS & The Business Of Selling Beatles Merchandise In The US 1964 – 66 which opened up a new chapter for me as not only is it one of the best reference books ever written on Beatles memorabilia collecting but also I have become good friends with the author Terry Crain and together through our mutual love and fascination of this hobby we continue to research the origins of the original sixties items done around the world.

I’d also like to thank Joe Hilton from www.Beatlebay.com for all his help and advice and for allowing me to use some of his fantastic images for this site.