Uri Geller buys John Lennon’s glasses, will exhibit in Tel Aviv

Israeli-British psychic and spoon-bender Uri Geller said Thursday he bought John Lennon’s iconic blue-tinted glasses for £40,000 ($51,000) at an auction held a day earlier.

Geller told the BBC he was “elated” with his acquisition and planned to display them in his museum in Tel Aviv in the John Lennon section next to an alien egg the late former Beatle presented to him.

“John Lennon and I were very good friends while we were living in New York in the 1970s,” Geller said. “I knew I had to buy these glasses whatever. I would have gone up to £500,000.”

Lennon gave the glasses to a man — identified as Michael, a resident of Surrey — in 1968 as a birthday present. Catherine Southon Auctions auctioned off the spectacles at Farleigh Golf Club in Surrey on Wednesday.

The auction house said Lennon gave them to Michael at Abbey Road Studios in 1968, when he and his girlfriend were invited to the studio on what was Michael’s birthday.

According to the auction house as quoted in the Guardian, Michael said: “I picked up a pair of glasses from a piano. Penny said: ‘Don’t touch.’”

But “John Lennon turned around and said, ‘He’s all right. In fact, he can have them. Happy birthday!’”

Michael noted: “They are not John Lennon’s prescription glasses, but he gave them to me and wished me happy birthday, so that is good enough for me.”

“John changed my life as that’s where I learned about spirituality,” Geller told the BBC, noting his “amazing connection” with the musician, who was murdered in 1980.

“He believed in UFOs and I believed in UFOs and he was fascinated by my alien collection,” he said.