Fan hopes to sell $6.5M Washington football collection to Commanders
WASHINGTON - There is a new Washington football museum in Montgomery County. But the owner doesn’t plan to open it to the public at all.
"I’ve literally dedicated my life to collecting," explained Samu Qureshi, who has spoken with FOX 5 about his expansive Washington football memorabilia collection before.
"When I do something I go kind of hog wild," he joked back in August 2022.
A realtor by trade, Qureshi was displaying the memorabilia in his Bethesda basement at the time. He was about to move and hoped to sell the entire collection to a single buyer for $5 million.
It included an almost unfathomable number of game-worn jerseys, stadium seats, cheerleader outfits, signed footballs, a headset used by Joe Gibbs, and much, much more.
"Riggo’s jock strap has become one of my most famous items," he laughed then.
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Bethesda man's massive Washington Football memorabilia collection up for sale
Items in the collection include a headset worn by Joe Gibbs, cleats worn by Vince Lombardi, more game-worn jerseys than you can count, and even a John Riggins jockstrap Qureshi said he got from a staffer at an old team training camp.
Despite offers for some of the items at this time, however, Qureshi chose not to sell a thing.
That is, until now.
Not only is Qureshi currently hoping for $6.5 million for the collection, he wants to sell it to the new owners of the Commanders in hopes that they’ll use it to build a museum dedicated to the team.
"It’s their team’s history, and if they want to start a hall of fame, I’ve got it," Qureshi said Monday.
In fact, he’s so confident that they’ll want it, that he is renting out 4100 square feet of vacant office space in Rockville – at a location he asked FOX 5 not to name – so that it can be displayed a little more formally and ideally make a good impression on representatives of the team.
"It needed a better presentation than it had, than being in a basement. You know it needed ten times as much space as there was," he said.
Qureshi is optimistic that news coverage will get the attention of Commanders’ ownership.
He said that if the owners ultimately decide not to buy the memorabilia, he will sell it off piece by piece, potentially within the next couple of months.
Washington Football memorabilia collection up for sale
The Washington Commanders will play their first preseason game next week, but you could say one of the team’s biggest fans is already in mid-season form. Samu Qureshi is looking to sell his massive Washington football memorabilia collection, which he says is the largest in the world.