Ultra-Rare Poster From The Very First ‘Acid Test’ That Launched The Grateful Dead Being Auctioned, Will Sell For More Than $20,000

It’s the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary, and a piece of genuine psychedelic history just surfaced from that era of counterculture fog in San Francisco. Heritage Auctions is offering one of the original, hand-drawn “Acid Test” posters from December 1965. It’s a simple crayon-scrawled flyer that also happens to mark the first time the band performed under the name Grateful Dead.

The current bid is $17,500. If nobody else bids, the poster will officially sell for $21,875, including the $4,375 buyer’s premium on the Heritage Auctions website. The auction closes on April 18.

“This is a crazy, crazy, almost unique piece,” says Pete Howard, Director of Concert Posters at Heritage. “We have a pair of sisters to thank—Kathy and Betsy. They were high school teenagers who pulled up outside the house, heard about it, and were mulling over whether they had the courage to go in. Right about then, Kesey’s bus pulls up full of Pranksters. They pile in, and the sisters decide not to go. But Betsy says, ‘Hang on a sec, Kathy,’ runs across the street, pulls down the poster we’re auctioning—and they just kept it forever. They were savers, keepers. Nobody else we know of saved one. Who knows how many were crayoned up?”

“We’d gone to the Acid Test to hear the Grateful Dead, a band we’d been following when they were known as the Warlocks,” Kathy wrote in a 2009 letter detailing the event. The sisters’ connection ran deep. “We’d heard about the event from my sister, Betsy’s, guitar teacher Bob Weir, who was a guitarist in the Dead.” According to the letter, Weir was giving lessons at Guitars Unlimited in Menlo Park, where Betsy took lessons as a teen.

“Just as we were arriving, Ken Kesey’s bus pulled up and a bunch of Merry Pranksters piled out and went inside,” Kathy wrote. “We were still in high school and were too timid to go in.” That moment of hesitation is what preserved this relic. “My sister ran across the street and took a hand-drawn poster down to bring back with her,” she recalled. “Nobody else that we know of saved one.”

As for who actually made the poster? “I would say it’s 100% speculation,” Pete adds. “Ken could have done it, or one of the Merry Pranksters. It could even be argued there were a couple of friends there that day who helped crayon up some posters. It’s pure speculation. I don’t ever stretch the truth in the favor of a good story. Right down the center, just total truth and honesty.”

This poster headlines Heritage’s April 17–19 Music Memorabilia & Concert Posters auction, which includes a staggering 94 Grateful Dead concert posters over two days.

“We’re working our way through one of the great Grateful Dead collections in history,” Pete says. “The Tim Backstrom Concert Poster Collection. He collected the Dead seriously. He was a Deadhead who followed them, taped them, and everything else. He passed away a few years ago, and we’re lucky enough to get the entire collection. We’ve got 50 of his pieces in this auction and plan to include 50 or more in every auction throughout the rest of 2025, and maybe into 2026.”

The collection spans decades, from early Bill Graham and Family Dog posters to more obscure and off-the-beaten-path flyers.

“He’s got really offbeat Grateful Dead stuff,” Pete says. “We have one in the current auction for Veneta, Oregon—a real small town—presented by Nancy’s Honey Yogurt. Just crazy stuff like that. Nobody’s seen it—or they haven’t seen it in 20 years. Corvallis, Oregon. Fully legitimate shows. And we’ve got posters for many of them thanks to the Backstrom Collection.”

Growing up in California, Pete’s been fascinated by the Acid Tests for decades, even if he never dabbled in psychedelics himself. “I’m a total baby boomer classic rock guy. First concert in 1969. I’ve read Tom Wolfe’s book. I’ve always been intrigued by the Acid Tests. Heritage has been lucky enough to run at least a couple. We hope to run a few more whenever collectors want to give them up.”

In the letter, Kathy also describes attending future Acid Tests and shows at the Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom, seeing early performances by Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, and the Holding Company, and even catching Janis Joplin’s first show with the band. “The scene was full of screaming and excitement,” she recalled. “We used to see Owsley, who passed out LSD in various forms to concert-goers.”

Man, I’d love to have any of these in my collection. I’ve been slowly framing posters from shows I’ve been to. I have some killer Phish prints, a few Jim Pollocks I cherish, plus a really rare Billy Strings poster from his small Lodge Room show in Los Angeles before he completely exploded in popularity. Vintage Grateful Dead, however, is the holy grail. It’s a good reason to keep working my butt off.

I’ve always been fascinated by this era in the Bay Area. What strikes me most is how simple this artifact is, which makes it feel even more powerful. Before all the mythology about the counterculture started getting popularized, there was just the spark of electricity happening in California. Eventually, some tremendous writers and musicians captured it: Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Ken Kesey’s books, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels. All this stuff captured a certain kind of person’s imagination in the 1960s and onwards. And out of that, a creative force that’s still going today.

Here’s a wild time-machine thought: If you were a teenager in the Bay Area back then, you could’ve grabbed a stack of these. Fast-forward to 2025 and maybe you pay off your mortgage (well, maybe not in California). But it wouldn’t be about the money. It’d be about standing at the flashpoint of something new that turned into a cultural earthquake.

Not bad for something meant to be torn down the next morning.

Hope it ends up in good hands. For that much money, I’m sure it will.