Ira Gitler's alto sax, played on record by Trane, Stitt, and McLean, is up for auction

[Mark Stryker]

https://www.bonhams.com/auction/27611/lot/70/a-buescher-alto-saxophone-played-by-john-coltrane/

[jcam_44]

$40k for a buescher regardless of who’s played it is wild. 

[JSngry]

"wild" is a euphemism...

[Late]

Auction ends tomorrow. The description lists the tunes where Coltrane played alto (from a Gene Ammons date). Um, the horn (pitch?) doesn't sound so good to me on those tracks. Whenever I come across them, I always wish that Coltrane was on tenor.

[Gheorghe]

Didn´t know that Ira Gitler had a saxophone himself. 
In context with Prestige Records I heard about the instrument named "Buescher" on an other occasion. But it was a trumpet.
On the liner notes of one Miles Davis album the producer writes that Miles arrived in the studio without his horn, and then one guy in the studio said "I have an old Buesher in the trunk of my car" and Miles told him to bring it in, and indeed Miles played the whole session on that Buescher. I don´t remember which album it might have been but it sounded great. 

About Trane playing an alto I have never heard. 
On the other hand, this kind of "swappin´ horns" seemed to be in common on Prestige. Isn´t there a Jackie McLean album on which he plays a tenor ? It sounds a bit funny, it´s got a kind of hollow sound. You hear the ideas of McLean , and a strange sounding tenor. 
Same with Bird. He also recorded for Prestige and used a tenor on it.