Beatles fans will have a LOT to choose from at an upcoming auction (Picture: Getty)

A Beatles fanatic heading into retirement has decided to sell the 15,000 bits of merchandise he owns.

Read John Lennon’s furious letter to Paul McCartney that is now going up for auction

France’s leading ‘Beatles historian’ Jacques Volcouve, 60, is letting all his records, signed books, posters, autographs, figurines and memorabilia go under the hammer in March in Paris.

It was the album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that triggered Jacques’ 50-year obsession with the four-piece, which he first listened to in 1967.

The collector with just some of his many treasures (Picture: Jacques Volcouve)

‘The Beatlemania bug bit me and I was never cured of it,’ he told The Observer. ‘I wanted everything to do with the Beatles: records; newspaper clips, posters, memorabilia… everything.’


Jacques loved the Beatles so much he became France’s top expert on them (Picture: Getty)

Jacques’ obsession grew so rapidly that in the early 1970s, he phoned a French radio show to correct inaccuracies in a BBC documentary they had played.



Volcouve, who was then invited to the studio, remembers: ‘I took in some of the recordings I had and the radio station had its archives, and we added material to the BBC series [The Beatles Story] so that the 12 hours that was broadcast in the UK became 18 hours of material in France.

‘It was so successful that it was re-broadcast twice in the same year.’

The Beatles in 1963, four years before Jacques got into them (Picture: Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Volcouve eventually met all the Beatles except John Lennon, who was shot in 1980, or his wife Yoko Ono.

As he looks ahead to retirement, which he hopes will be funded by the money he raises in the auction, Jacques says he does have some feeling of regret about how, like many hardcore fans, his love of the band consumed his life.

‘I don’t want to sound bitter but I gave my life to them [the band] and I’ve never had any recognition or help, not even a free ticket to a concert,’ he added.

‘For many years I was insufferable because all I talked about was the Beatles. I tried to find a professional job but in the end I was always the “Beatles historian”, and every time I had any money I spent it on Beatles stuff.

The Beatles had a famously powerful effect on their fans (Picture: Central Press/Getty Images)

‘Still, George [Harrison] told me in 1977 that if just one person appreciates your work then it hasn’t been a waste of time, and I know the things I have done over the last 40 years have been important to many people,’ he concluded.

The auction will be held at the Drouot auction house on March 18.

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