A jaw dropping collection of Muhammad Ali memorabilia pieced together over a 30-year period is now on the auction block.
Heritage Auctions has opened its Summer Sports Auction, headlined by the huge archive that includes numerous one-of-a-kind historic pieces from Ali’s long career.
The collection began with a single purchase at a New York sports memorabilia convention in 1988 and over the years, grew into a veritable Ali history museum, curated by Troy Kinunen, a lifelong collector and CEO of Mears Authentication and Research Services.
“Quite simply, it is the most comprehensive Muhammad Ali collection ever to come to auction,” says Chris Ivy, Director of Sports Auctions at Heritage. “What Troy has done here is tell Ali’s life story with treasures that were present for every bout and every brag and every historic highlight in between. It’s one of the most extraordinary collections we have ever been honored to offer.”
Growing up, Kinunen was an avid baseball fan who chased cards and autographs of the game’s great players but he often found the best material was out of his financial reach as a young collector.
He bought his first Ali piece – a poster from his Nov. 14, 1966, fight with Cleveland Williams at Houston’s Astrodome at that New York show because it was one of the few items he could afford.
“It was colorful, it was cardboard, it was kind of small, and I thought I could display it,” says Kinunen. “And a kind of light bulb went on at that very moment.”
He would spend the next three decades amassing more than 1,600 items tied to the legend of Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali. Things Ali wore and signed during (and often after) his most memorable, immortal and infamous fights –robes, gloves, trunks, even mouthpieces (including the one from The Rumble in the Jungle) over which he uttered those infinitely quoted taunts and jeers.
He chased down posters from Ali’ fights—those that hung in the location where they were held or in the theatres where closed circuit TV broadcasts took place decades ago. He landed every ticket and every pass to every bout and was especially enamored with photos, some of which are the earliest taken of the kid from Louisville, KY.
Eventually, Kinunen was able to chase truly rare items including the elaborately embroidered prayer cap gifted to him before 1975’s Thrilla in Manila and the red robe worn before his first fight with Joe Frazier in 1971.
Kinunen will be the first to admit: When he bought that first poster, he knew little about Ali outside of his appearance in ABC’s Wide World of Sports opening sequence and what he’d read in grade-school primers. But in time that flicker grew into an all-consuming flame, beginning with Kinunen seeing Ali at conventions, where he saw the former champion, slowed by age and Parkinson’s, still interact with fans just as he had decades earlier – posing for photos, sparring and shuffling with the wide-eyed and the awestruck, teasing and taunting everyone like they were Howard Cosell with a mic.
“The lightning bolt hit me, and I was fully dedicated to collecting him,” Kinunen says. “I had never seen anything like that. It was so inspirational, so special, to witness it.”
Soon after Kinunen began taking out classified ads in Louisville, seeking keepsakes Ali might have given to hometown folks who knew the young Cassius Clay. The result was a goldmine of treasures offered by old friends and acquaintances to whom Ali had given the robe off his back or the gloves off his hands.
“They all had a story,” Kinunen said, “They met him. They hung out with him. Sometimes they were boyhood friends. Or it was: ‘I went to the gym, and he gave me his gloves.’ Or, ‘I saw him this day, and he signed an autograph for me. Everybody I met – dozens of people, maybe a hundred people – they all had the exact same experience, so I was able to get all this great stuff direct from the source.”
Eventually, Kinunen was able to assemble an Ali collection that tells the boxer’s complete story, at least once he stepped foot into the circled square. Among the earliest keepsakes in his collection: a rare 1960 photo of Cassius Clay with Joe Martin, the Louisville police officer who pushed the young man into the ring in 1954 and later served as his boxing coach; a 1959 photo that’s likely his first newspaper portrait; and a 1960 Intercity Golden Gloves team-signed photograph that bears what’s likely Cassius Clay’s first autograph.
As Kinunen began his ascent through the sports-collecting ranks, he was able to start buying things once out of his price range, among them keepsakes that had been in the collection of Ali’s longtime cornerman Drew “Bundini” Brown. After each fight, Brown took gloves, robes, trunks – whatever he could get his hands on – and kept them in a storage locker. Eventually, the contents of that locker sold at auction, and Kinunen snapped up whatever he could, including the red robe Ali wore entering his first fight with Joe Frazier on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden.
Frazier was declared the unanimous victor in that 15-round “Fight of the Century,” handing Ali his first professional loss – in front of Frank Sinatra, Burt Reynolds and a star-studded crowd, no less. The New York Times noted that Ali entered the ring sporting a “red and white king’s robe,” but he would say later that he believed his infidelity to his customary white-and-black garb had been part of his undoing. Forever after, The King of the World swore off wearing red. There is just this one robe, signed by the man who would never again put it on.
“It’s the crown jewel of the collection,” Kinunen says. “The red robe from the Frazier fight is iconic on many levels. It’s just very special. It catches your eye. It’s a little different than everything else. And it’s from a fight he lost. A lot of boxers, after they lose the first one, they quit or weren’t heard from again. But that motivated him more than anything to come back and become champion again. That robe is the story of the comeback. It’s a symbol of: Don’t quit, don’t give up, and overcome even the biggest adversity, such as losing to Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden.”
From the Bundini collection, Kinunen was also able to acquire the WBC Heavyweight Championship Belt Ali reclaimed when he knocked out George Foreman in eight rounds during October 1974’s Rumble in the Jungle – the fight immortalized in Leon Gast’s Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings. Ali took back that which had been stripped from him seven years earlier, when he refused to be drafted into the Army to fight in Vietnam.
Kinunen was also able to track down one of the crowning achievements of his collection: the prayer cap given Ali before the Thrilla in Manila in 1975, which Heritage considers among the most significant pieces its sports division has ever offered.
This photo-matched cap is crafted from black velvet with golden embroidery and pink beading; the Muslim star and crescent adorn the front, and the name “Muhammad Ali” is stitched on each side. The pristine-condition cap, matched to a photo taken while Ali prayed at a mosque on Sept. 25, 1975, comes from the personal collection of assistant equipment manager Wali Muhammad. And it’s so impressive a piece it drew crowds when displayed last year at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago.
So expansive is Kinunen’s collection it includes the sign that once adorned the entrance to the 5th St. Gym in Miami Beach, where Ali trained from 1960 until he opened his private training camp in Deer Lake, Penn., 12 years later.
The gym was founded in 1950 by Chris Dundee, who employed his brother Angelo as trainer. Ali’s presence at the 5th St. Gym attracted the likes of Sinatra, Burt Lancaster and the Beatles to the landmark that was demolished in 1993. The sign, which comes from Angelo Dundee’s collection, is eight feet long and three feet tall.
Divesting himself from his long time pursuit wasn’t an easy decision for Kinunen to make.
“He was The People’s Champion, and this is the people’s collection,” Kinunen says. “These things need to go back to the world, to the institutions and museums and people who appreciate Muhammad Ali as much as I did. It took me a year to make up my mind about consigning it, and in the end, I thought Heritage Auctions was the perfect fit for this.
“I mean, the Muslim prayer cap, that’s a religious artifact, and Ali was a spiritual leader to millions and millions of people. And to have that artifact locked up in Milwaukee, WI., just doesn’t make sense. That piece now has the potential to be viewed and enjoyed and appreciated by millions. That’s why we’re having this auction, to bring these things to the people who appreciate Muhammad Ali the most.”
Related Stories:
Ali’s Handwritten Speech Asking for Spinks Rematch Up for Auction
Gehrig Memorabilia, 1924 Ruth Bat Headline Heritage Auction
Notes: Black Sox Photo Sells; Ruth Letter; Ali Collection to Auction; Dodgers Museum
Notes: On-Site PSA Grading at Long Beach; Strickland’s Fight Gear at Auction
Ali’s WBC Title Belt, Rumble Trunks Bring $500K Combined
Ali’s Boxing Trunks Cartoon, Hand Wrap from Wepner Bout Up for Bid
Ali Collectibles a Boom or Bust Market
Ali’s Fight of the Century Gloves Return to Auction
