Prince's blue teal Cloud guitar fetches record $700k

Prince's blue teal guitar - one of the late, great star's many custom-built Clouds - became the most expensive yet sold, when it went under the hammer for $700,000 at a Californian auction house.

That staggering amount puts the previous Prince record holder, the arguably more widely known yellow Cloud's $187k price tag firmly in the shade. Julien's Auction House, no strangers to high-profile instrument and gear sales, had estimated that the guitar would fetch between $60,000 and $80,000. 

The unidentified buyer secured a guitar that Prince played in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, before donating it to the Los Angeles relief fund in 1994. A letter of authenticity from maker Andy Beech verifies its lucrative provenance.