Behind the Scenes of the Jim Irsay Collection Auction]

Many famous guitar collections are simply impressive – but some go far beyond that. So far, in fact, that they become as culturally important as anything found in a museum and raise questions about the role private guitar collections play in preserving pillars of modern culture.

Jim Irsay, who died last year, was that kind of collector. The catalogue of his collection reads like a roadmap of American pop culture and includes everything from the original paper-roll manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road to Miles Davis’s Martin trumpet and, of course, some of the most important guitars the world has ever seen.