Valued property
If Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball is worth $3 million, what’s the training camp where Muhammad Ali prepped for some of his most famous fights worth?
George Dillman is about to find out.
Dillman, a Reading, Pa., karate entrepreneur, bought Ali’s Deer Lake, Pa., training camp in 1997. Ten years later, the complex of log cabins on five acres of mountainside is poised to sell on eBay for more than 20 times the $100,000 Dillman paid.
Bidding on the place Ali called “Fighters Heaven” is set to end at 10:02 p.m. EDT Wednesday. Dillman said advisers tell him bidding will escalate in the last days and hours of the auction; as of Tuesday, the top of 25 bids was more than $2 million.
But no bid had reached the reserve Dillman set. Under terms of the sale, he has the right to reject offers if that minimum is not met. Dillman won’t disclose the minimum but claimed to have already rejected offers of $2 million before putting the camp on eBay.
“I’m not going to give the camp away,” Dillman said.
Just how high bids might go is tough to say. It is impossible to compare it to other Schuylkill County real estate and nearly as difficult to make a comparison to other sports memorabilia.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Ken Hatter, a real estate agent in nearby Orwigsburg, when told of the latest bids. Hatter said an 11-acre tract not far from Ali’s camp recently sold for $115,000, and a 68-acre parcel nearby went for $479,000.
“This is obviously due to the history that goes with it,” Hatter said, calling the camp a “bragging piece.”
“Some guy who made a fortune on Wall Street can buy it to put a feather in his cap,” Hatter said.
Chris Goeres, who sells Ali memorabilia for ProSportsMemorabilia.com, said, “It is almost not just sports memorabilia. It’s like a historical monument. That is almost beyond being a collector.
“It is one thing saying you have an autographed boxing glove from Muhammad Ali. It’s another to say you’re sleeping in his bedroom. That is an ego item right there.”
The multimillion dollar bidding doesn’t surprise Goeres.
“Knowing the fans and some of the people out there, I can see that getting twice that,” he said.
Dillman, 64, would rather not part with the place.
A ninth-degree black belt, Dillman started training with Ali when the champ set up a temporary training camp in 1971 at Bernie Pollack’s mink farm in nearby Orwigsburg.
Ali decided he liked the idea of training in the Schuylkill County countryside, purchased five acres of nearby mountain land and began building a permanent camp.
Many of the cabin-style buildings contain logs from trees felled by Ali, who made clearing land with an ax part of his workout regimen, along with running the adjacent mountain roads and sparring in the 3,000-square-foot gym he built as the camp’s centerpiece.
In its heyday, champion boxers such as Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard and Larry Holmes trained there. Celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Rodney Dangerfield and Elvis Presley were regular visitors. Actor Mr. T served as Ali’s bodyguard there.
Ali stopped using the camp after he retired from boxing in the 1980s. For a few years, the camp was rented for $1 a year to a group that used it as a home for unwed mothers. In 1997, Ali sold the facility, overgrown and in disrepair, to his old training partner.
Dillman estimated he’s spent $500,000 cleaning up and restoring the camp to near original condition.
All the cabins got new roofs, new insulation, new carpet and new plumbing. Dillman even brought in a crew to restore and preserve the boulders where Ali’s father hand-painted names of legendary fighters.
The compound was last used as a boxing camp a few years ago, when Reading native Kermit Cintron trained there before winning the WBO welterweight title in 2004. Dillman also sponsors martial arts camps there.
Despite his sentimental attachment to the camp, Dillman said he has to sell.
“I went through a pretty rough divorce. This is one of the things I have to do to finalize the divorce,” Dillman said.