Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's smashed guitar sold for $100,000

A guitar used by late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain on the band's first US tour has been sold at auction for $100,000.

The smashed Fender Mustang guitar was sold by Sluggo, a punk guitarist and friend of Cobain, to an unidentified private collector, according to Yahoo Music.

The instrument was destroyed onstage in New Jersey, after which Cobain decided to trade it with The Grannies and Hullabaloo guitarist for a working one for the next gig.

Sluggo held on to the guitar for a number of years before eventually lending it to Seattle’s Experience Music Project for display.

Jacob McMurray, senior curator at the Project, told Yahoo Music: “It’s a really cool looking guitar because it’s smashed and held together with duct tape and Kurt Cobain wrote on it. There’s not a huge amount of broken Nirvana guitars out there.”

The guitar is the second-highest selling piece of Cobain memorabilia to date, following the $131,000 sale of his Mosrite Gospel Mark IV guitar at an auction in 2006.