Rare Beatles photos sold for over $333,000

NEVER-before-seen photographs of the Beatles' first US concert in Washington DC have been sold in New York for more than $US360,000 ($A333,240).

The photos were taken by a man who attended their concert on February 11 1964, at the Washington Coliseum, two days after their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Mike Mitchell, of Washington, was 18 at the time and took photographs just metres away, the Belfast Telegraph reports.

Fifty silver gelatin prints he made from negatives were sold individually at Christie's auction house and had been expected to fetch just $US100,000 ($A92,567) all up.

But a backlit photograph Mitchell shot while standing directly behind the Fab Four sold for more than $US68,000 ($A62,945) and an image of Ringo Starr on the drums went for $US8,125 ($A7,521).

Cathy Elkies, Christie's director of iconic collections, said: "Beatles fans are fierce. To uncover this trove of images that's never been published will really excite people."




Mitchell, 65, who now works as an art photographer in Washington, stored the negatives for nearly 50 years in a box in his basement.

He used digital technology to scan and restore the prints for auction. He said the images could never have been restored previously to the extent they were because he could now do "much better darkroom work that could ever have been done in a traditional darkroom".

Recalling the concert, when he was just 18, he said: "It was as low-tech as the concert itself. The concert was in a sports venue and the sound system was the sound system of a sports venue."

Photos of the Fab Four's second trip to the US that year, in Baltimore, were also sold at the Christie's auction, BBC reports.