Noel Gallagher's 1999 Fender Jaguar — Edinburgh Hogmanay

Hogmanay, Edinburgh, New Year's Eve 2007. Kasabian are headlining the Concert in the Gardens at Princes Street Gardens, one of the largest open-air music events in Great Britain, with a crowd of 100,000 filling the city centre. Without announcement, Noel Gallagher walks on stage and plays this guitar in front of that audience, welcoming in 2008. This is not an instrument merely owned by Noel Gallagher: it is an instrument played by him, in public, before 100,000 people, on a single documented night. In the market for artist-associated instruments, that distinction is everything.

The attribution rests on a photo-match of unusual strength. Three concert prints are included with the instrument and show Noel holding this exact guitar on stage in Edinburgh; the Rolling Stones tongue sticker he applied himself to the cream pickguard is clearly legible in the photographs, an unambiguous visual link between the instrument in its case and the one in his hands that night. The guitar also appears in a photograph of Noel's personal rack at Wheeler End Studios, positioned beside his signature Gibson ES-355. Two independent photographic anchors: within rock memorabilia, most instruments carry one or none.

Documentation is equally complete. The guitar is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by Jason Rhodes, Noel Gallagher's personal guitar technician with Oasis, responsible for the preparation, maintenance and handling of every instrument Noel played — a role that placed him in direct physical custody of each guitar before it reached the stage. Together with the letter of provenance, the concert prints and the photo-match, the set carries four independent layers of authentication. Physical evidence of touring life survives too: an original USAir luggage tag marked Gallagher/NMR for the London Gatwick to Pittsburgh route, a Bill Puplett / Ignition management tag, the original strings still mounted, and the original Fender travel case labelled in Noel's own hand Fender Jag Sunburst, Tokyo. Since the Oasis reunion, instruments with this degree of event-specific documentation have moved to the very top of the memorabilia market, and the supply of photo-matched, single-night guitars is permanently fixed: no more will ever exist.