Jim Irsay: NFL Owner by Day, Rock ’n’ Roller by Night

Irsay first got hooked on baseball cards, though with less than altruistic motives. Growing up on the north shore of Chicago, he rode his bicycle to the local drugstore on Monday mornings and bought entire boxes of baseball cards before other boys could get there. He funded the purchases by selling bubble gum at a markup at school.

“I guess I was an illegitimate dealer in grade school,” he joked.

Irsay said he wanted to begin collecting after college, but his father, Robert, who used the fortune he made in the air conditioning business to buy the Colts, paid him a $100,000 salary. With a mortgage and three children, there was not much left to bid on prized objects, he said.

But 25 years ago, when Irsay inherited the team, he also gained the wherewithal to bid for top shelf items. His first big foray into collecting came in 2001 when he paid $2.4 million for the 120-foot-long scroll that contained the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road.” It was the only time Irsay showed up, paddle in hand, to bid for an item.

“I’ve always been mostly attracted to great writers,” he said. “The scroll became a writer’s Holy Grail.”

Collecting at this level is unpredictable, but Irsay seems to revel in the chase. He consults with Brinkley and other experts as well as with his curator, Larry Hall, whom Irsay texts and calls at all hours to talk about items he covets. He will relay his bids by phone, which he did from Hawaii when Cobain’s guitar was auctioned. He gave Hall a top bid of $2.2 million, then dropped out after it passed $2.4 million. But on a hunch, he raised his top bid to $3.6 million and went to bed. When he awoke, he discovered he got the guitar for almost precisely his maximum. (With fees and taxes, the total price hit $4.9 million.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/arts/music/jim-irsay-memorabilia.html