BEND, OR, Feb. 11 — A gold record, earned by the Beach Boys and once owned by Charles Manson, is now in the possession of a Bend woman and is for sale — if the price is right.

Cheryl Spahn, who owns a local bus line and the gold record, is the granddaughter of the man who owned the Spahn Ranch near Chatsworth in Southern California — the ranch where Manson spent his last days of freedom.

The record is the “Summer Days” album that generated sales of more than 1 million copies for the Beach Boys and their record company. Included on the album are “California Girls,” “Girls Don’t Tell,” “Salt Lake City,” “The Girl From New York City,” “And Then I Kissed Her,” and “Amusement Park, U.S.A.”

Spahn said she has been told the gold record album is worth anywhere from $700 to $10,000, and is waiting for an interested collector to make her an offer.

“My understanding of the Manson connection to the record is that he and his group of followers had been staying with Dennis Wilson — one of the Beach Boys — in his Beverly Hills home,” Spahn said. “Wilson is the Beach Boy who drowned last year. Wilson apparently gave Manson the record and other records while he was staying there. Wilson apparently got fed up with Manson — and this was before the murders — and asked him to leave. That’s when they ended up on my grandfather’s ranch.”

Spahn said Manson took the record with him when he and his group applied for work at her grandfather’s ranch — which was really a large, non-working Western movie set, with all the outbuildings.

After Manson was convicted, along with four of his followers, in the 1971 killing of seven people, including Sharon Tate, he left the records at the Spahn Ranch.

“My grandmother had the record, and she knew I was a nut about music,” Spahn said, “so on one of her trips up here to Oregon she brought this gold record with her and gave it to me. I’ve had it for years, bumping around with it. I just hung onto it, and never thought it was worth any money.”

Spahn’s grandfather was blind at the time the Manson group approached him for work on the ranch. He reportedly thought they were just homeless stragglers or homeless ranch hands, and gave them a job watering and feeding his horses on the ranch. The Manson group lived in the ranch outbuildings.

“They just moved in on him and helped him take care of the horses or any other work he had for them,” Spahn said.

She has had two different views on the worth of the gold record.

“Some friends back East checked into collector agencies for me and were told the record is worth from $5,000 to $10,000,” Spahn said. “Then I heard from someone in the Los Angeles area who said it was worth only about $1,200. That’s quite a discrepancy. I know that it is probably worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it, and who knows how much that is? I just have to find the right person.”

Spahn said she has been told that the Beach Boys records — especially the gold records — are near the top in value, along with records by the Beatles.

“They are supposed to be a very hot item,” she said. “This one, with the Manson story behind it, could make it quite valuable.”

A record dealer in the Los Angeles area reportedly offered between $700 and $800 for the Beach Boys record, and would even consider paying as much as $1,000 to $1,200 because of the Manson tie-in, according to Spahn. That same dealer said Beatles gold records are selling for $3,000.

“I just want to sell it,” Spahn said.

“I guess anyone who likes the Beach Boys would be a potential buyer. I know the minimum price I’ll take. I just want to talk to anyone who might be interested in it.”

By ROBERT E. SHOTWELL