The unique poster for the Friday, Jan. 30, 1959, concert at the Laramar Ballroom headlined by Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper is currently being auctioned by Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the high bid was $21,000. The auction will end in 18 days.

Holly, Valens, and the Big Bopper were all killed on Feb. 3, 1959, in a plane crash near Clear Lake, just three days after the show at the Laramar Ballroom. The crash was later immortalized in the 1971 Don McLean hit “American Pie” as “the day the music died.”

“This poster is nothing less than a key jewel in the crown of the world’s most valuable concert posters … those from the very brief, ill-fated 1959 Winter Dance Party tour,” said Pete Howard, concert posters director for Heritage Auctions, in the poster’s online listing.

Howard estimated that only 50 to 100 posters would have originally been made for the show at the Laramar Ballroom, with many discarded or damaged by weather or time.

The 14-by-22-inch poster is one of only four known to still exist for the entire Winter Dance Party tour, including one from the fateful Moorhead, Minnesota, performance which is where they were heading when their plane crashed.

The poster for the Moorhead concert sold at auction in November 2022 for $447,000 – the most expensive concert poster to date.

Other Winter Dance Party posters from the Mankato, Minnesota, show sold for $125,000 while the Green Bay, Wisconsin show sold for $250,000.

“It’s really neat that even with 120 years of history in this building, that there is still relevance for the Laramar Ballroom in popular culture,” said Sadie Andersen, co-owner and event manager of the Laramar Ballroom. “It’s so cool to be able to be a part of history once again.”

The Laramar Ballroom poster listed tickets for the Jan. 30, 1959, show as $1 and $1.50 and included images of Holly, Valens, the Big Bopper, plus Dion and the Belmonts and stated “dancing for teen-agers only … Balcony reserved for adult spectators.”

The Fort Dodge Laramar Ballroom poster has been displayed in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

“This is such a popular and historic image that naturally, the graphic art has been reproduced and poster-bootlegged endlessly over the last few decades,” Howard wrote. “But this poster was created for one purpose only: to get teenagers into that ballroom on a cold winter’s night to have a little fun. (Parents and chaperones, up to the balcony please.)”