Stuart Pivar buys a platinum flute for a record price

Stuart Pivar buys a platinum flute for a record price in an October 1986 auction scene where the object’s value rises far beyond its estimate and its buyer briefly disappears behind someone else’s celebrity. The flute cost $170,000 at the hammer—about $200,000 with tax and commission—and its purchase exposed a tension between Pivar’s apparent reluctance to seek publicity and his disappointment when recognition passed him by.

The Auction and Its Bids

On October 18, Pivar called to say he was interested in a platinum flute at Christie's and wanted Andy Warhol to take an interest in a gold one. Warhol met him and Sam at the auction and looked over the gold flute, which he thought might make a good necklace. The sale offered three different price points: the silver flute went for $4,400; Warhol bid on the gold one up to $22,000, but it sold for $40,000; and the platinum flute, estimated at $40,000, drew bidding that climbed much higher.

Pivar had decided not to bid above $120,000 for the platinum flute. Yet as the bids continued, he kept his paddle raised, shaking beside Warhol. The account conveys the pressure through this physical reaction: Warhol could feel Pivar's whole body trembling. Pivar was also desperate to identify the other bidder, but he and Warhol could not see where the competing bids were coming from. When the bidding ended, Pivar had won at $170,000—$50,000 above the limit he had set for himself, and more than four times the estimate. With taxes and commission, the purchase came to about $200,000.

A Buyer Mistaken for Someone Else

Pivar was in shock after the sale. The room, however, initially assigned the purchase to Warhol. People hurried over to Warhol with their cards and copies of Flutist magazine, treating him as the new owner. Reporters followed and asked why he had bought the instrument. Warhol answered some by inventing a connection to his collection of World's Fair plastic knives and forks, and told others that he planned to melt the flute down. The jokes extended the confusion rather than correcting it: Pivar, still shaking, could not bring himself to tell the reporters that the flute was his.

Warhol eventually pulled Pivar out of the room. Only afterward did they learn that the rival bidder was a man from New Hampshire who looked rich. Warhol suggested that Pivar invite him to one of his musical soirées and try to sell him something. The suggestion turned the mystery bidder into a possible future guest and customer, even as the immediate spectacle had left Pivar unable to speak. The sale's social aftermath thus belonged, at first, to Warhol: he fielded questions, supplied comic explanations, and had to lead the stunned buyer away.

The Flute's History and Its Public Life

The flute came with an unusual history. It was American, and a man had willed it to his mistress. After his death, his family could not believe he had kept a mistress, so they held the instrument up for ten years. The diary gives no further account of that delay, but the story attached to the flute contrasts with the auction's brisk escalation: a private bequest had been stalled by the family's disbelief, while the instrument now became the focus of a highly visible contest over price and ownership.

The day after the auction, Pivar was still in a daze over the $200,000 flute. On October 20, the instrument appeared on the front page of USA Today under the headline "Record Price Paid for Flute," but the paper did not name him. The public record registered the price while omitting the person who had paid it. Warhol observed that Pivar pretended not to want publicity but seemed crushed when he did not get it, comparing the pattern to Pivar's excitement about a story Steve Aronson had written, which he likewise tried to conceal.

Price, Recognition, and the Ending

The purchase's immediate ending is therefore divided. Pivar secured the flute, but the headline that made the record price public left him unnamed; Warhol, who had not bought it, had received the attention at the auction. Pivar's reaction the following day and Warhol's observation about his response to publicity make the contrast part of the event, not merely an afterthought. The flute's value was announced in large type, while its owner's desire for recognition had to be inferred from his disappointment.

The diary follows the event through concrete measures of excess: a $40,000 estimate, a self-imposed $120,000 ceiling, a $170,000 winning bid, and a final cost of roughly $200,000. It also preserves the auction's mismatched roles: Warhol improvising for reporters, Pivar trembling beside him and then falling silent, and a newspaper announcing the price without identifying the buyer. The instrument's record-setting sale made its price unmistakable; the question of who would be seen as having bought it remained less straightforward.