The former Indianapolis Colts owner, Jim Irsay, was a huge fan of rock and music, and also an enormous collector. So when he passed and the family auctioned off his musical collection a number of record breaking sales happened in the same day.
You’ve probably already heard that David Gilmour’s “Black Strat” sold for a record $14.5 million. But it was Irsay who bought it last round for $3.9 million himself, in June of 2019.
Jim Irsay was born rich. His dad was a wealthy HVAC contractor who is the guy that bought the Baltimore Colts in 1972, and eventually moved them to Indianapolis back in 1984. That’s when Jim took over as president, and later when his father passed, owner. So he’s always had more money that he knew what to do with. With the exception of spending it on world famous and expensive pieces of music history and musical instruments.
Jim owned hundreds of guitars, many of them the most famous guitars in all of history including Gilmour’s “Black Strat”, Kurt Cobain’s Fender Mustang from the Smells Like Teen Spirit video, an autographed Jimi Hendrix Gibson Flying V, Johnny Cash’s acoustic Martin guitar, Ringo Starr’s first Ludwig drum kit, George Harrison and John Lennon guitars and Lennon’s piano, McCartney’s basses, Jerry Garcia’s favorite Tiger guitar, Jim Morrison’s microphone, Elton John’s piano, even Prince’s yellow Cloud Guitar. The list is astounding and you can see it here, here, here, and here. There are 4 links because his collection was so enormous they had to do 4 separate auctions.
According to the website NewAtlas.com: "The last of Christie’s four auctions of the Jim Irsay Collection has closed, setting 28 new world record prices, most notably the largest memorabilia auction in history (US$94.5 million), the first two guitars to sell for more than $10 million (hereandhere),the world’s most expensive trumpet,the world’s most expensive saxophone,the world’s most expensive drum kit (twice),the world’s most expensive music concert posteranda near miss on the world’s most expensive piano. In total, the sale included nine of the top 21 guitars ever sold at auction."
Find out all of the records broken at the NewAtlas website.
