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Most people know Jim Irsay as the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, but the man who inherited the franchise from his father in the 1990s has plenty of other interests aside from football.
Irsay—who has an estimated net worth of close to $4 billion—has used a solid chunk of his fortune to amass an incredibly impressive collection of virtually invaluable pop culture artifacts, including Jack Kerouac’s original manuscript for On the Road and Hunter S. Thompson’s iconic “Red Shark” Chevy Caprice convertible.
That treasure trove also includes a number of guitars that once belonged to artists that served as the voice of multiple generations, as Irsay owns the Fender Bob Dylan busted out at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the axe Kurt Cobain played in the music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirt,” and Jerry Garcia’s hallowed stringed sidekick “Tiger.”
While it’s hard to put a price on those musical relics, Irsay recently revealed someone in Dubai had attempted to do exactly that during a recent episode of The Eddie Trunk Podcast.
Irsay let that fairly juicy detail slip around 58 minutes into the conversation, as he said he received a nine-figure offer from an unspecific group that was hoping to secure every single guitar in his collection and put them on display in the United Arab Emirates, recalling:
“I was offered by a Middle East element—kind of like what’s been going on in golf a little bit —$1.15 billion for the collection.
They wanted to move it to Dubai and they wanted it in totality.”
The Colts owner hinted he turned down the offer because of the unique nature of the pieces he definitely has an emotional connection to, saying:
“I’ve put this together for 25 years, with blood, sweat and tears. The collective of this ‘collection’ is so incredible, because there’s nothing like it—and you can’t get certain things anymore.
You can’t get the Tiger anymore. You can’t get David Gilmour’s Strat or the Beatles’ drum kit. It’s just not out there.”
I can’t say I know what it’s like to be offered more than a billion dollars for anything, but I also can’t say I blame him.