Bob Dylan's Handwritten 'Times They Are A-Changin'' Lyrics Up for Auction

Don't expect the handwritten lyrics to Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' to match the $1.2 million that John Lennon's words to 'A Day in the Life' earned last June. But, as the New York Times reports, music memorabilia bidders will still need substantial cash if they expect to win out at Sotheby's Dec. 10 auction of Dylan treasures.

Listed in the auction catalog as a "sheet of un-ruled three-hole notebook paper," Dylan's protest song later appeared as the title cut of his landmark 1964 album. It will be auctioned a part of a larger sale of books and manuscripts, which Sotheby's claims should fetch $200-300,000.

Apparently, Dylan didn't care about holding onto his notes after he memorized his lyrics. The paper was given to Kevin Krown, a folk-singing friend of Dylan's, who then left them to Mac and Eve MacKenzie, also members of the New York folk scene, when he died in the 1990s.

"Although he also seems to have had a capacity for dropping people, forgetting them and moving on, in the case of Krown and the MacKenzies, they got something tangible out of it, at least," Selby Kiffer, a Senior Vice President in Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, told the Times.