It looks like Mozart's hair is worth more than Beethoven's.
A lock of Mozart's hair sold for 35,000 pounds ($53,400) on Thursday, while strands of Beethoven's hair went for 8,124 pounds ($12,400), Sotheby's auction house said. The buyers and sellers weren't identfied.
The lock of Mozart's hair was in a 19th century gilt locket that also contains a handwritten note explaining the provenance of the strands.
"Hair of W.A. Mozart. Part of a lock given me by Karl Anschutz he having received it from his mother to whom it was given by the great composer's widow. Given by me to Arthur Somervell, Jas Collet," the handwritten note says.
Anschutz (1813-1870) was a conductor, Somervell (1863-1937) was an English song writer whose wife, Edith, was the daughter of James Collet, a civil engineer, Sotheby's said.
The auction house had said the item was expected to fetch 10,000 to 12,000 pounds (about $15,000 to $18,000).
The Beethoven lock came with an invitation to the composer's funeral. Sotheby's had expected it to fetch 2,000 to 3,000 pounds ($3,000 to $4,500).
The invitation laments the passing of the "celebrated and irreplaceable composer, who died from the effects of dropsy at 6 o'clock in the evening of 26 March 1827."