The Saville Strat

Turn this miniature around and you'll see why it's special: the back is covered in handwriting. It's a farewell poem Jimi Hendrix wrote on his own guitar, with lines from his song Love or Confusion. And it wasn't decoration: it really was a goodbye.

Let's go back to June 4, 1967, at London's Saville Theatre. Before the show, Hendrix hand-painted a white-and-red Stratocaster and wrote the poem on the back.

That night, the Jimi Hendrix Experience opened with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles album that had come out just days before. The best part? Paul McCartney and George Harrison were in the audience. Imagine hearing your brand-new song covered like that, with you watching.

At the end of the show, Hendrix smashed the guitar on stage and threw the pieces into the crowd. It's said this may have been the first time a guitarist deliberately destroyed his guitar at a rock concert, even before the famous burning at Monterey, just two weeks later.

A few fragments survive today. Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) holds several, and two halves of the body, with much of the poem still visible, were sold at auction.