Baby we were born to bid — again.
A handwritten working manuscript of Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 hit “Born to Run” is now on the auction block for a second chorus at Sotheby’s, where it’s expected to fetch $300,000.
That much dough would buy about 590 tickets to “Springsteen on Broadway,” where the average ticket price to the Boss’ sold-out hit solo show last week stood at a whopping $509.
The same lyric sheet to the New Jersey rocker’s masterpiece that had been in the collection of Springsteen’s former manager Mike Appel sold to an unidentified primate American collector on Dec. 5, 2103 for $197,00.
That sum nearly doubled the presale high estimate of $100,000.
Five years, later the presale estimate has risen $200,000 to $300,000.
“As anyone that follows the success of his autobiography and his Broadway run knows, Bruce Springsteen has an enormous fan base,” said Richard Austin, head of Sotheby’s Books & Manuscripts Department in New York.
“The estimate of $200/300,000 reflects his popularity, as well as the competition we saw for ‘Born to Run’ in 2013.”
On Tuesday afternoon, one day into online auction ending at noon on June 28, no one had bid on “Born to Run.” The opening bid is set at $160,000.
The lyrics in the early 1974 version of “Born to Run” differ significantly from the finished product, but they contain the familiar chorus of, “Tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”
Sotheby’s notes most of the lines in this 1974 version are apparently unpublished and unrecorded.
The autographed lyric sheet, composed in Long Branch, N.J., is written in blue ink, on an 8 1/2-by-11-inch sheet of ruled notepaper.
The document is part of a Manhattan sale of fine books and manuscripts. Also up for bid is the working manuscript for “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”
