Want Johnny Cash’s ring? A Minnesota company is auctioning off some of his prized possessions

Johnny Cash’s daughter Cindy flipped through pages of her late father’s handwritten notes and photos in an Edina office building on Friday. A postcard signed “Daddy” was one of her favorites.

“I’ve gone back and looked at the auction,” Cindy Cash said, “and already, I’m going, ‘Oh. Why did I give that up?’”

Edina-based Karats by Auction House is auctioning off hundreds of items owned by or connected to Johnny Cash, including rings, furniture, belt buckles and handwritten lyrics, in what it dubs “The Cindy Cash Collection.” The auction begins closing on Sunday starting at 12 p.m., with more than 500 lots closing, one per minute.

Karats owner James Egge said the online auction is breaking records for the company, as it has “well over 15,000″ potential buyers “in the room.”

For Cindy Cash, who was born to Johnny and his first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash, in 1959, it’s a chance to give back to fans, she said. She is donating part of her proceeds to conservation group Sea Shepherd and to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“The fans are who made dad Johnny Cash,” Cindy Cash said. “And I wanted to share some things with them — with people that love him, people that care about him, that want a piece of him. And believe me, I have a plethora left.”

Born into a poor rural Arkansas farming family in 1932, Cash recorded music across roughly a half century and was known for his deep, plaintive voice touching genres such as country, rock, blues and gospel in beloved hits like “Ring of Fire” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” according to an article published by the National Endowment for the Humanities magazine.

He enjoyed a late-career surge in popularity with the release of his 81st album, “American Recordings,” in 1994. He died in 2003.

Egge said the idea for the auction sparked when a consignor flagged to him rings belonging to Johnny Cash and his second wife, June Carter Cash, and asked the auctioneer to sell them. Egge wondered if he could build out a whole auction category based on the iconic singer behind hits such as “Big River,” which mentions St. Paul.

Then, he spotted a Norman Rockwell print on eBay as belonging to Johnny Cash and flew down to Nashville to buy it, Egge said. He had no idea the seller originally was Johnny Cash’s daughter until he did some research.

“He said, ‘Do you have anything else you want to sell?’” Cindy Cash said, recalling the encounter with Egge. Looking to build a new home and move, Cash offered him a bed and then a cabinet — both of which are up for auction.

“It just kind of got bigger and bigger,” Cindy Cash said.

Working with the possessions of the “American icon,” Egge said, is “humbling.”

“It brings on a big cloak of responsibility to do it right and to do it justice,” Egge said. “I kind of lose track of myself as an auctioneer or the business while I’m in the process.”

Auction items include an antique, non-firing rifle previously owned by Cash; an engraved sterling silver dish awarded to Cash after sales of “At Folsom Prison,” recorded inside the prison, hit a milestone; and lyric sheets, diamond rings and photos. Supposed old phone numbers of stars scrawled in Johnny Cash’s handwriting are listed on some of the documents.

“We can call Clint now if we want,” Egge joked about a number listed for Clint Eastwood that no longer works.

One of Cindy Cash’s favorite items in the auction is a photo of her sitting in her father’s lap.

“We were really into this conversation,” she recalled, when singer “George Jones walked in and said, ‘Get up, my turn.’ And he sat down in my dad’s lap, and they got a picture of him kissing dad on the cheek and dad’s laughing so hard.”

Cindy Cash said she still holds on to boxes full of other belongings, as her mother saved tons of relics, from recipes to phone bills.

The auction makes the daughter miss her father, she said. She called him a “teacher of life.”

“He always had the coolest answers for everything,” Cash said.