The kidnapped guitar: George Harrison's "Lucy"

"Lucy" — a cherry-red 1957 Gibson Les Paul named after Lucille Ball — may have the best pedigree in rock. Owned in turn by John Sebastian and Rick Derringer, it landed with Eric Clapton, who used it to play the solo on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" before gifting it to George Harrison in 1968. Harrison played it on the White Album and Abbey Road.

On April 13, 1973, burglars hit Harrison's Beverly Hills home and took Lucy. The guitar moved fast: sold to Whalin's Sound City on Sunset Boulevard, which resold it within days — skipping the legally required 30-day holding period for checking stolen-property reports — to a visiting Mexican musician, Miguel Ochoa.

Harrison traced it to the shop, then to Ochoa, and called him directly: your money back for my guitar. Ochoa, skeptical he was really talking to a Beatle, instead drove home to Guadalajara with the Les Paul. Harrison called it a kidnapping. In a surreal twist, his friend and sitar mentor Ravi Shankar happened to be in Guadalajara for a TV appearance — and announced on air that Harrison's stolen guitar was in the city, naming the man who had it.

Even that didn't close it. Ochoa opened negotiations with a wish list of vintage instruments. Harrison bargained him down to a 1958 sunburst Les Paul (sourced from Norman's Rare Guitars) plus a Fender Precision Bass, flew intermediaries to Mexico, and made the trade. Lucy came home and stayed with Harrison until his death in 2001. The "ransom" Les Paul later sold at auction in 2022 for $312,500.

The lo.st takeaway: the 30-day stolen-property check existed precisely to catch this — and it was skipped. Paper-era safeguards fail at the speed of a resale. A registered, scannable identity travels with the item across every handoff, every border, instantly.