Tommy Lee is selling the snare he played that night
For the first time, Tommy Lee is selling show-played snares and cowbells off the Carnival of Sins stage — two snares and one cowbell per night.
Band merch is usually a t-shirt. Occasionally a signed stick. Very occasionally, a drum head somebody has scribbled on.
Tommy Lee has gone considerably further. On the current Mötley Crüe tour he is selling the actual snare drums and cowbell he plays on stage that night.
How it works
It is a VIP package rather than a shop listing, and it is tightly limited — two snare drums and one cowbell per show.
You meet Tommy before the show, where he customises and signs the drum. You watch him play it. Then, after the show, you collect it from his drum tech.
That last part is the bit that makes it interesting. This is not a display piece pulled from a warehouse — it is a drum that has just done a full Mötley Crüe set, with the dents to prove it.
Prices run to four figures, which is either outrageous or entirely reasonable depending on how you feel about Mötley Crüe.
The tour behind it
The drums are coming off The Return of the Carnival of Sins, a 33-date North American run that opened on 17 July 2026 in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania.
It marks two anniversaries at once: twenty years since the original 2005 Carnival of Sins tour, and the band’s 45th year. Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx and Tommy are joined by John 5 on guitar.
The original tour is the one with the drum rollercoaster, so expectations for the rig were high.
Is it actually worth it?
Depends entirely on what you are buying.
As an instrument, no — you can buy a very good snare for a fraction of it, and our Gear Guru will happily point you at one. As a piece of memorabilia with a verifiable, watched-it-happen provenance, it is a much better deal than most signed gear, where you are largely trusting a certificate.
The honest caveat: show-played drums take a beating. Expect wear, expect dents, and understand that is rather the point.
If you want to compare against the wider market first, the Reverb price guide is the sane place to start.
Final thoughts
We like this. Artist memorabilia is usually vague and overpriced, and this is specific, limited and genuinely his.
It also says something about Tommy at sixty-three: still finding new ways to make the drum kit the most interesting object in the building.
Read our full Tommy Lee feature or see his full rig, era by era, in the Rig Vault.