Auction for Yoshiki's "Crystal" Piano Relaunches Monday, 4/25
LOS ANGELES, CA Friday, April 22, 2011 -- YOSHIKI, leader of X Japan, the biggest rock band in Japan, put his ³crystal² piano, a see-through Plexiglas Kawai grand, up for auction on April 17 to raise money for the Japan Relief Fundraising Auction in conjunction with Yahoo! Japan. About eight minutes into the auction, the bid shot from $.01 to $42,000; within hours, an online bidder pledged a staggering $73-million.
On Tuesday, 4/19, Yahoo! Auctions temporarily suspended the auction, citing an overload of unexpected high volume of traffic on the site, high bidding prices, and the time required for bidder confirmation procedures. Yahoo! Auction¹s systems have now been restructured, new bidding policies are in place, and Yahoo! has identified the last confirmed bid for the piano as $512,231.70.
The auction is set to resume on Monday, April 25, and will run through Thursday, April 28.
The Japanese-born YOSHIKI, who lives in Los Angeles, felt the earthquake tremors while in a Tokyo recording studio working on X Japan's first North American album, and was shocked by the large-scale damage across Japan. YOSHIKI and his X Japan band mates decided to postpone the March 15 release of their first U.S. single, "Jade," so they could focus their time and energies helping with the recovery.
In addition to the auction of YOSHIKI's "crystal" piano, YOSHIKI, through his YOSHIKI Foundation America, is spearheading a major celebrity auction to benefit the survivors of the earthquake and tsunami. The Foundation has already received items from Marilyn Manson, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis, comic book legend Stan Lee, Robert Pattinson, James Franco, and Reese Witherspoon.
For more info on the YOSHIKI Foundation America, go to: http://www.yoshikifoundationamerica.org
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