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Eli Manning is an open book in his 10th season ... or is he?

(John Munson/The Star-Ledger)

Eli Manning is an art collector. This is not the premise to his next Saturday Night Live skit, even if it sounds hilarious.

This is real. Manning has a fine collection of works from Southern artists and is so serious about it, he even commissioned one to make a painting of an old Mississippi general store his family owns. It hangs in the living room of his Oxford, Miss., home.

“He’s always had a good eye for it,” that artist, William Dunlap, said over the phone this week, “and he’s wise beyond his years,”

Manning is entering his 10th season with the Giants, and to mark that anniversary, we set out to do something that seemed impossible: Can we find 10 things you might not know about No. 10?

Turns out, the task was not so difficult at all. There is plenty, even after all these years, that the two-time Super Bowl MVP has managed to keep mostly out of the public eye. This might be the most surprising discovery: The image we have of Manning – the goofy little brother who is a wicked practical joker – is totally incomplete.

He is, in the words of Dunlap, “a first rate athlete and a lot more than that.”

Onto the list …

1. The art thing is real. Dunlap used the words "fine" and "eclectic" to describe Manning's collection, which includes a painting Dunlap made of former Giants quarterback Charlie Conerly – who, like Manning, starred at Ole Miss – when the artist was in high school.

“When I looked at it, I realized I painted six fingers on Charlie’s hand,” Dunlap said with a laugh. “I told Eli about it and he said, ‘I want that painting.’ I figured where else would it be better?”

Dunlap gave him the painting, and then made him a new one -- this time, of Manning himself. “I gave it to him and told him, ‘I want you to see I made progress in 40 years.’”

2. He likes fine wine, too. This nugget comes courtesy of his oldest brother, Cooper, who says Eli "can have an intelligent conversation with a sommelier" when the family goes to a nice restaurant.

The Giants quarterback reads wine magazines and has an extensive collection of bottles. So if you thought Eli was strictly a Budweiser kind of guy, think again.

“I guess it did (surprise me) a little bit when I realized he had become a collector,” Cooper said. “But he’s very knowledgeable about this wine. He got into it about eight or nine years ago.”

3. His taste in music is … questionable. Just in case you think he has become the Renaissance Manning, Giants PR director Peter John-Baptiste offered this as a counterpoint: The song "This Is How We Do It" by Montell Jordan is always on his iPod playlist.

4. He has a cooler apartment than you. It was even featured in the magazine Electronic House – yes, there is a magazine called that – in 2008.

Every room in the 3,000-square-foot Hoboken condo has a touchpad control that allows his to control, well, everything. He can lower or raise the shades, turn on the stereo or TVs, whatever.

“I love that from [any] room, I can control anything I want,” he told the magazine. “I can wake up, take a shower and control the music in there. At night when I go to bed, I don’t have to worry about leaving lights on. I have an ‘ALL ON/ALL OFF’ button right by the door.”

He can even push a button and a column will slowly rotate to reveal a hidden wet bar. Like we said, it’s cooler than your place.

Eli Manning has twice won a car for being Super Bowl MVP. But does he know where he's going?

5. He has a lousy sense of direction.

This is not our opinion, but the opinion of his longtime teammate and friend Chris Snee. Apparently, those two cars he’s won as Super Bowl MVP better be equipped with a navigation system, because he needs one.

“Every year when we’d go to Albany (for training camp), he’d punch the address into his GPS because he could not remember how to get there,” Snee said. “He’s that guy. I’m worried he’ll get lost coming here.”

6. He is a fundraiser for service dogs. And a good one, at that. Manning hosts the annual charity golf tournament for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a nonprofit guide dog school in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., that provides training and the animals for the visually impaired at no cost.

He got involved because a family friend named Pat Brown, one of the best blind golfers in the world, recruited. He stayed involved because, as a dog lover and owner himself – he has a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel called Chester – he became passionate for the cause.

“Having Eli involved made a profound difference in the event,” said Michelle Brier, the marketing director for the charity. “He has become an ambassador for our work.”

7. His brothers used to hold him upside down until he cried. And he never, ever cried. "It used to drive us crazy," Cooper Manning said. "He was unbelievable. He could take a lot of punishment."

Eli the Prankster is infamous. But pretend a Michael Scott quote was his in an NFL video was his finest work.

8. He once pranked the NFL itself.

If you have followed the Giants for even two minutes, you know Manning is a prankster. It is has been written countless times, with each new victim telling a similar story about the language on a cell phone changed to Japanese or something.

But his best one isn’t widely known. Manning, during an interview for the NFL’s video tribute to Super Bowl XLII, tells the camera, “I'm not superstitious, but I am a little 'stitious. I know that's not a real word, but it's my own little saying.”

Well, except he stole the line from Michael Scott from The Office. The NFL had no clue, of course, and later in the episode narrator James Gandolfini – to borrow the words of longtime TV critic Alan Sepinwall – “repeats the line with all the gravity of John Facenda referring to the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field.”

9. He has a strong bond with Giants history. When the Giants host the Broncos next week in one of the most anticipated games of the NFL season, an old friend will be in MetLife Stadium.

Her name is Perian Conerly, and she is the 86-year-old widow of Charlie Conerly, the former Giants quarterback. Conerly, a family friend, got to know Manning when he was a quarterback at Ole Miss and always appreciated his awareness of her husband’s career.

So this is one member of the Manning family inner circle who won’t be afraid to take sides in this one. “Of course, I’ll be rooting for Eli,” she said from her home in Mississippi. “I think Peyton would understand.”

10. He's a pretty good sport. As he left the locker room on Thursday, we copped to the conversations with friends, family and teammates trying to come up with 10 things people didn't know about him.

He listened to a few entries on the list, nodding his head with interest. Art fan? Yup. Wine connoisseur? Guilty. Bad navigator? He wasn’t admitting that, and he wanted to know how anyone had access to his iPod playlist.

“Well, that should be fun to read,” he said as he left the room. “Maybe I’ll find out something about myself.”