Jim Irsay Says He Was Offered More Than $1B To Move His Absurd Guitar Collection To Dubai

Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay is an interesting dude in every conceivable interpretation of that word.

Outside of overseeing the Colts, Irsay is a massive collector of all kinds of memorabilia, but it's his guitar collection that will make any music nerd start drooling.

The Colts owner has rounded up some of the most iconic guitars of all time. He occasionally puts his collection on display or lets artists play them.

Irsay has Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's legendary black Fender Stratocaster, Jerry Garcia's "Tiger," and the Strat Bob Dylan played at the Newport Folk Festival. He even has the Fender Mustang Kurt Cobain used in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video.

As if that weren't enough, he's got plenty more. Irsay is the proud owner of the only complete Beatles drumkit and Muhammad Ali's Rumble In The Jungle championship belt.

In a recent interview with Sirius XM's Eddie Trunk Irsay revealed that he had been offered a lot of money to part with the collection.

“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,” Irsay said, per Guitar World. “They wanted to move it to Dubai and they wanted it in totality.”

He didn't get into specifics about who exactly offered him the money. Although, between the crazy amount of money and the veiled reference to LIV Golf, I think we can all issue a pretty good guess.

Irsay's Collection Took Years And Millions Of Dollars To Amass

Irsay's collection also includes axes played by Prince, the Beatles, Bo Diddley, Les Paul, and more. Beyond music memorabilia, he has all sorts of crazy stuff. That includes the 1777 Continental Congress proclamations making Thanksgiving a national holiday.

A serious collection of this scale doesn't happen overnight as Irsay explained to Trunk.

“I’ve put this together for 25 years, with blood, sweat, and tears,” Irsay said. “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 Tiger anymore, you can’t get David Gilmour’s Strat. you can't get the Beatles drum kit. It’s just not out there."

As for the most expensive piece?

“The highest thing that was bought at auction was actually Ali’s belt,” Irsat said. “That went for almost seven million dollars."

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