Which guitarist has the most valuable guitar collection?
In the music world, just what exactly constitutes “valuable” for a guitar collection is subject to a myriad of different definitions.
First, there’s sheer volume. Blues player Joe Bonamassa reportedly boasts over 500 vintage guitars in his collection, while ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ pop rocker Lenny Kravitz confesses to a hefty 800. ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons is rumoured to be somewhere in the 1,000 mark, including many highly customised originals such as his famed Les Paul revamps, but the king of quantity is Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, amassing over 2000 guitars in his time, although how many he still has now is up for debate.
Then there’s the prestige factor. For the guitar connoisseur, Jack White’s prized collection of 400 rare guitars and other instruments, including a coveted 1964 Epiphone Coronet, pulls in eager axe experts. Eric Clapton may just muscle The White Stripes frontman out of the way with his esteemed set of over 200 guitars, supposedly lurking in his vault, the ‘Brownie’ 1956 Fender Stratocaster he cut ‘Layla’ with, and his trusty 1964 Gibson ES-335.
His iconic 1964 Gibson SG, designed by psychedelic art collective The Fool, isn’t to be found, however, passing hands from George Harrison, Jackie Lomax, and Todd Rundgren before selling at auction for a cool $1million in 2023. Where does novelty play into it? Nitro guitarist Michael Angelo Batio demands kitschy fascination for his dual bat guitars, and ZZ Top and Nielsen are back with their gallery of weird and wonderful custom axes, from fluffy instruments to Cheap Trick’s legendary five-neck guitar.
So which guitarist has the most valuable guitar collection?
Clapton’s holy Fool guitar found its way into the collection of billionaire and former owner of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts, Jim Irsay.
Outside of the American football business, Irsay indulged in a love of amassing enormous amounts of memorabilia and cultural artefacts across music, film, history, and sports, possessing items with such heritage value that select relics have been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Library. These include original correspondence letters from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln’s pocket knife, and JFK’s rocking chair.
But it was his guitar collection that Irsay had built the greatest reputation. Among his approximately 200 were originals from Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, and Lou Reed, plus Bob Dylan’s Stratocaster, famously plugged in for his Newport electric sets. Elsewhere, Jerry Garcia’s custom ‘Tiger’ stands tall in his collection, the 1969 Fender Mustang wielded by Nirvana in the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video, and George Harrison’s Gibson SG used on Revolver. The list is exhaustive.
“If someone has a death in the family or a transformative time in their life, and a certain song came out at that time, they remember that moment,” Irsay told Guitar.com in 2021, stressing the emphasis on cultural preservation over vainglorious pop cultural hoarding. “It’s way bigger than just saying, ‘Oh, that’s a nice song. That’s a cool groove.’ It’s much more than that. I mean, it’s the fabric of people’s lives. It’s so important to me that in the museum, people can play things and touch them.”
And yes, Irsay was a guitar player himself, hosting free concerts across the country with his Jim Irsay Band, collaborating at times with Heart’s Ann Wilson before his death last May.
