A man who was slammed by much of the internet for smashing up a $4,000 Taylor Swift guitar has spoken out.
Swifties were left raging after watching a video of an incident that took place at an event known as the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, Texas, over the weekend.
The Ellis County Wild Game Dinner held an auction as part of their mission to help the youth, with one item being a ‘guitar autographed by country music star Taylor Swift’.
I mean, any Swift fan would be dying to get their hands on this, and many would have paid a lot of money to get their hands on it.
The Taylor Swift guitar was purchased for a lot of money (Jamie McCarthy/WireImage)
The guitar was decorated in pictures of the ‘Blank Space’ singer during her worldwide Eras Tour.
The instrument caught the attention of one particular man, who forked out a whopping $4,000 to purchase it.
While doubt remains about if Swift personally signed the guitar, any Swiftie would die for the instrument.
However, the man, who has since been identified as 67-year-old Gary Estes, wasn’t taking the guitar home.
With a hammer in hand, Estes decided to plough into the wood of the popular instrument.
Footage of the man battering the instrument quickly went viral, with many suggesting the move may be politically motivated.
Ahead of the November election, Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president.
Estes has now spoken out following the backlash, insisting the incident was a joke.
“It was just a joke at an auction that we had to raise money for kids, right? And that’s all it was,” he told NBC News.
“There was nothing mean about it, nothing bad about it. It was just a joke that they were making up on the stage, and we just followed through with a joke.”
While many found the viral video shocking, Craig Meier, a spokesperson for the event, told NBC News the incident was ‘light-hearted’.
The man smashed up the guitar (TikTok/@jdcobb58)
He said: “It was a funny, light-hearted thing. I know maybe it seemed to be malicious, but everybody was laughing,” Meier said. “There were people there, at the time, who joked around that he’s mad because he doesn’t know how to play the guitar.”
The auctioneer claimed it was an obvious political statement.
He added: “Taylor Swift, it became a political thing, and that was kind of the gist of it, just a light-hearted bit of a dig at Taylor for coming out politically and entertainers using their influence to influence politics.”
Featured Image Credit: TikTok/jdcobb58/Kevin Winter/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
A guitar supposedly signed by Taylor Swift that was sold for $4,000 to a man who immediately smashed it was apparently not actually signed by the singer after all.
On September 28, the Ellis County WildGame Dinner in Waxahachie, Texas held an auction event for charity. Per their website page, the Ellis County WildGame Dinner describes itself as an organization committed to ‘supporting agricultural and rural education to the youth of Ellis County.’
As part of their charity auction, the organization advertised on their Facebook page that they would be auctioning off a ‘guitar autographed by country music star Taylor Swift.’
The organization advertised that they would be auctioning off a guitar allegedly signed by Swift. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
However at the event, a man reportedly bid $4,000 on the guitar, only to plough it with a hammer immediately after winning it. Video footage of the guitar’s destruction went absolutely viral online, with one video posted on Twitter earlier this week garnering over 22 million views.
The plot has now thickened however as a source close to Swift’s merchandise company confirmed to HuffPost that the guitar was not signed by the singer and that it was not a certified official guitar used by her.
Moreover, the source added that an actual signed guitar by Swift would come with a certificate of authenticity, which her team reportedly doesn’t believe the auctioned guitar has.
Variety also reports that the guitar came with a signed CD insert but the instrument itself was not signed.
An actual Taylor Swift guitar for reference. (Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)
Reactions toward the man’s guitar purchase have been divided on social media, with some of Swift’s supporters theorizing that his actions may have been politically motivated following the singer’s public endorsement of Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris.
“A grown man paying $4,000 to destroy a guitar to impress Trump is next level pathetic,” one user on Twitter wrote.
“It doesn’t affect Taylor Swift and he just lost $4,000,” another added.
“Imagine spending $4k on a guitar when there’s literally an emergency situation on the east coast,” another user said in reference to Hurricane Helene. “That $4k could have [helped] a lot of other people instead of some collector.”
