Inside the world's largest private sports memorabilia collection

JournalismPakistan.com | Published 1 hour ago | Dr. Michael Down

Dr. Nauman Niaz curates the world's largest private sports memorabilia collection in Islamabad, featuring rare cricket artifacts, signed jerseys, and legendary equipment from global sporting icons
Summary

LONDON — Dr. Nauman Niaz has long been a familiar name in drawing rooms and press boxes alike: an esteemed Endocrinologist by vocation, a distinguished sports broadcaster by temperament, and now, almost by the quiet insistence of fate, the custodian of the largest collection of sports memorabilia in the region, perhaps, in its private form, the largest in the world. His is not a museum of things but of thoughts; not a hoard but a philosophy. He gathers, yes, but he also preserves, consecrates, and animates. One feels, in the atmosphere of his archives, the presence of a man who has made a pact with time.

The Legacy of Cricket Collecting

For many years, the relics of cricket's past have been darned together by devotees who chase the game not only in sunlit stadiums but also in the quiet, half-forgotten corners where its memory lies asleep. Such collections remain, for most, far out of reach. Their drawers stay shut, their keys kept in private pockets. A visitor may wander through a museum at Lord's and admire what curators permit, but for those whose allegiance is to cricket's printed soul, the brittle pamphlets, the obscure circulars, the faint newsprint that once breathed with summer, the experience feels like stopping at long-off when the real story is unfolding in the dressing room.

In that world, Nigel Rae's collection stands colossal, unrivalled. David Frith's domain, too, belonged to legend: a room teeming with the stray papers of cricket's long voyage, dreams discarded yet somehow living on, summers half-remembered yet always summoned back. Even as these lines are written, Frith's splendid kingdom is dissolving into auction lots, its first tranche already scattered. What remains is The David Frith Archive, a tome so immense it resembles not a book but a mausoleum to a civilization no longer visible. The originals cannot be touched; but through the pages of that monumental volume, one may yet imagine the breadth of Frith's empire, picture him moving through it with the unquenchable hunger that built it.

A Collection That Transcends Borders

There has been only one other collection granted the same reverent treatment by publishers, and that is the two-volume Collector's Eye, published in 2021. It is still expanding, restless, alive, less a vault than a growing organism. Its home lies far from the usual centers of cricket's antiquarian folklore; it resides in Islamabad, and perhaps because of that distance its images gleam with unusual vividness. Its owner, Nauman Niaz, sends news of his latest finds like dispatches from an archaeological expedition, as though the past has not died but continues to rise, steadily, from the soil.

Others preceded him: Pat Mullins and Tony Baer in cricket's late-twentieth-century twilight; before them Joe Goldman and Sir Julien Cahn. Their collections were formidable, and fragments still repose in Melbourne, where the curious may stand before them and sense a faint echo of the fever that once gripped those men. But none of these assemblies, impressive though they were, came together in quite the manner of Nauman's. His is no single-minded pursuit but an intersection of passions, crisscrossing like strokes of a calligrapher's brush. Cricket, he admits, is his earliest allegiance, and a majority of his museum bends in that direction. But the other half speaks to a mind that has roamed beyond the boundary, wandered past mid-on and long leg into the broader theaters of history.

Beyond Cricket: A Museum of Global Icons

A glimpse of this wider compass appears in the opening pages of Collector's Eye: a set of signed photographs. The unsuspecting viewer anticipates WG Grace, Ranjitsinhji, Pilch, Wisden. Instead, the assemblage startles: Adolf Hitler, Erwin Rommel, Abraham Lincoln, Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, King George VI, Diego Maradona. The effect is to pause, to recalibrate the mind's sense of order. And in the accompanying photograph, one sees Ian Chappell, Vivian Richards, and Rashid Latif, not performing the easy politeness of the seasoned traveler, but genuinely undone by astonishment. Men who have faced fast bowling without blinking suddenly find themselves dwarfed by the scale of Nauman's universe. Even Nauman, guiding them through the labyrinth, wears the expression of a man who is still discovering the boundaries of the realm he has created.

To engage with him now is to acknowledge that some worlds cannot be contained by neat paragraphs or numbered lists. Nauman's domain spreads across continents and centuries; it is a place where the echo of Gilbert Jessop's hundred mingles with the rustle of a Victorian dust jacket, where a signed postcard breathes the same air as a bat that once shaped Ashes history. To pose a handful of questions is almost comical. Yet this age of endless conversation allows installments without measure, as long as Nauman continues to open one door after another.

The Early Years: From Childhood Collector to Curator

From the very beginning, he seemed destined for such a life. While other children exhausted their toys on the grass, Nauman placed his in soft pouches, tended them as though they possessed an inner light. He lined up sharpened pencils like family heirlooms, filed school report cards with the care of a librarian handling manuscripts. Whether it was the germ of nostalgia, the early stirring of ownership, or simply a child's instinct to rescue moments from the great drift of time, the impulse never left him. It grew, matured, deepened, until one day it found its natural home in a museum that belongs, wholly and unmistakably, to him.

He was seven years old when cricket first revealed itself to him, not as a caress from a transistor radio or a drifting conversation caught in a corridor, but as a living, sweating pageant beneath the Lahore sun. At Gaddafi Stadium that day, Pakistan played New Zealand, and a young Javed Miandad, fresh to Test cricket, shaped an innings of 163 that seemed less made with bat and blade than carved upon the very light of the afternoon. In the tense warmth of that debut, the boy Nauman held a match brochure, and by the time he emerged through the gates at dusk every Pakistan player and every New Zealander had inscribed their names upon it. To others it might have been a souvenir; to him it was an initiation, his first passport into the republic of cricket.

The Foundation of a Lifelong Passion

Around this same age, a maternal uncle, Khawaja Rauf Zakria Kitchlew, a Ranji Trophy cricketer seasoned by long journeys on sun-burnt grounds, placed two books in the boy's hands. One was a first edition of The Jubilee Book of Cricket (1897), the other Imperial Cricket of 1912, its pages still resonant with Edwardian poise. That night, the books lay beside his pillow like faithful sentries guarding a gate newly opened. Sleep hovered but did not succeed.
Understanding Value and Authenticity

In the great theater of collectible sport, value is not a matter of commerce alone; it is an alchemy of provenance, rarity, and the soft whisper of history itself. Authenticity forms the very bedrock of this world. Without the firm handshake of verification, even the most radiant relic becomes no more than an echo. But when a piece is certified, when its lineage is traced as carefully as a genealogist traces noble blood, its worth deepens, strengthened by the trust it inspires.

That night, the two books lay beside the boy's pillow like loyal sentries, guarding the threshold of a world newly revealed. Sleep, poor intruder, stood little chance against their quiet enchantment. For Nauman's mother, herself a familiar figure at Lahore's Bagh-i-Jinnah when Test cricket drifted through the city like a traveling theater had placed in his hands her own autograph book: the 1951 MCC tourists, the Pakistan side bound for India in 1952-53, the Indian team of 1954-55, and New Zealand in 1955. It was a genealogy of cricketing migrations, all stitched together within one humble binding.

Building the Archive: Signatures, Books, and Beyond

And the lineage did not end there. In procession came the MCC "A" side under Donald Carr in 1955-56; the Australians of 1956; the West Indians of 1958-59; the Australians once more in 1959-60. At twelve, Nauman began gathering first-class cricketers' signatures as if charting a map of the sport's human geography. Photographs, brochures, magazines, anything that bore the faintest trace of the game's passing shadow. By thirteen the signatures yielded to books, and the pursuit deepened into something close to vocation.

When asked later whether his family urged him on or just allowed him to wander, the truth revealed itself as something gentler. He was indulged, cherished, and encouraged. Good grades became cricket books in his father's quiet economy. Uncles, on both maternal and paternal sides, fed his passion with unwavering hands. And in such an atmosphere, even the most delicate obsession is capable of blossoming into a lifelong devotion.

A Collector's Refined Taste

Visitors to his museum soon discover that Nauman's tastes have never been narrow. Cricket forms much of his orbit, yes, but his interests range across eras, aesthetics, and moods. Yet he is drawn, like a moth to twilight, to the pre-war and Edwardian worlds: signed postcards fading at the edges, autograph sheets yellowed with grace, rare handkerchiefs that once fluttered from pockets at Lord's and The Oval. With time, the hunt grew more refined; the quarry rarer. He sought first editions, lovingly inscribed; photographic plates by J.C. Anderson, George Beldam, and Chevallier Tayler; match-used bats and stumps, equipment whose scars delineate their own biographies.

The Desert Island Selection: Ten Irreplaceable Treasures

And then came the mischievous question, tossed into conversation like a pebble into a still pond: if catastrophe threatened his museum, some unforeseen calamity would he stay among the ruins or flee with what he could carry? He drew breath, half amused, half wounded at the thought. Then, with the solemnity of a man choosing which memories to rescue from time's fire, he answered:

Felix on the Bat (1845), inscribed and signed
A presentation copy of WG Grace's Cricket (1891), one of only ten ever born into the world
Lillywhite's Scores & Biographies, Vols. I & II, signed by the hand of Fred Lillywhite (1862)
Victor Trumper's match-used bat from Lord's, 1899
Don Bradman's match-used bat
A large original photograph from Australia to England, 1909, signed across its frame
The hand-signed team photograph of MCC's 1907-08 tour
WG Grace's match-used bat from 1905
Ranjitsinhji's match-used bat from 1896
The original ball from the 1902 Test in which Gilbert Jessop stormed a century that still rattles the memory of the game

A Bibliophile's Paradise: Fifteen Literary Gems

Among these, three books, naturally. A bibliophile first and last; everything else radiates from that central sun. Asked to go further, to speak of books treasured for their romance as much as rarity, Nauman produced a constellation of fifteen more. They wander across centuries and moods, as his museum does.

Kings of Cricket by Richard Daft (1893), subscriber's edition, number six
The Cricket Field by James Pycroft (1922), the final limited edition—his copy one of a hundred
Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James (1963), that sovereign jewel of cricket literature—a first edition inscribed to G. Neville Weston
Scores of Matches 1786-1822 by Henry Bentley (1823), complete with both supplements
A Few Short Runs by Lord Harris (1921), the autocrat recounting his own tale
An Australian Cricketer on Tour by Frank Laver (1905), an intimate sketch of two English summers
With Stoddart's Team in Australia by KS Ranjitsinhji (1898), noble in diction, princely in perspective

Rare Volumes That Restore Lost Worlds

The list unfurls like an arras, each book a thread in Nauman's lifelong pursuit, a pursuit that began with toy cars preserved in pouches and pencils lined up like relics on a shrine. Yet among the many books orbiting his collection, some hold a peculiar somberness, not only for their rarity but for the worlds they restore.

Stray Thoughts on Indian Cricket by J. Framjee Patel (1905): the first attempt to grasp cricket in India in its totality. Nauman's is a first edition, still breathing faintly of its age
With the MCC in Australia by Philip Trevor (1908): the lone account of the 1907-08 Ashes, printed on paper so fragile time itself seemed its opponent. His copy endures in quiet defiance
Memento of Arthur Shrewsbury and Alfred Shaw by W.F. Grundy (1907): a modest volume weighted with late-afternoon melancholy
WG by W.G. Grace (1899): the giant's own narrative, astonishingly still bearing its original dust jacket, like uncovering a Victorian waistcoat untouched by moth or time
10 for 66 and All That by Arthur Mailey (1958): a memoir that ripened with age into a small miracle
Lambert's Cricketer's Guide (1816): rare as winter sunlight, a second edition steeped in the odor of centuries
Curiosities of First Class Cricket by F.S. Ashley-Cooper (1901): the work of cricket's first great archivist; Nauman owns one of the hundred specially bound copies
Alfred Lyttelton: His Home Training and Earlier Life (1916): enriched immeasurably by a personal letter tucked inside, one of those moments when a book ceases to be an object and becomes a life entire

Inside the Museum: Where Sports History Lives and Breathes

And now, as all good conversations must, this one pauses, not in conclusion, but in suspension. For Nauman's world is far from exhausted. A collector's patience, generous though it is, cannot be spent all at once; and any true collector lives as much in the anticipation of the next relic as in the possession of the last. But for those hungry for proof, for a glimpse into the museum he has summoned from a lifetime of devotion, there are images enough to begin with, and more stories yet to unfold.

There exists a study room in Nauman's home where the ordinary world falls away, replaced by something close to consecration. To step across its threshold is to wander into a small heaven fashioned for the sportsman's imagination, bewildering in its splendor, intoxicating in its abundance. One feels at once the hush of a chapel and the thrill of a stadium at dusk.

Icons of Global Sport Under One Roof

On one wall rests the serene defiance of Jesse Owens, his signature an echo of Berlin's unforgettable summer. Beside him, Babe Ruth gazes out of sepia tones, the arc of his autograph as confident as the swing that once hurled baseballs into myth. A shoe worn by Diego Maradona lies like a relic of a saint whose miracles were performed not in cathedrals, but on trembling Argentine grass; opposite it, a boot signed with flourish by Cristiano Ronaldo, the ink curling with the certainty of a man who has lived among the constellations of acclaim. There, too, hangs his original Manchester United shirt, the cloth still breathing faintly of Old Trafford's roar, as do the garments of Maradona, Messi, and Pele, each a testament to afternoons when time seemed to pause mid-flight.

Not far away is Ronaldinho's shirt from the Champions League Final of 2006, worn in the warm May night of Paris, its colors still carrying the laughter and joy of a footballer who danced as others ran. And arranged with quiet care lie tennis balls touched by Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Ivan Lendl, and Lleyton Hewitt, their signatures looping across the felt like the flight patterns of past summers. A portrait of Kobe Bryant, signed in bold elegance, watches over the room with the solemn grace of a man who lived as fiercely as he played.

Muhammad Ali: The Greatest's Many Incarnations

Muhammad Ali appears again and again, as though one incarnation of him could not suffice. His match-used glove rests like a relic of prophecy; the phantom punch seems to ripple still within its leather. There is a gathering of golden signatures, five champions whose fists shaped entire eras: Norton, Foreman, Holmes, Frazier, Ali. Black-and-white photographs of Ali and Frazier recall nights when the world braced itself for the sound of two souls colliding. Nearby, Ali reappears in his older name, Cassius Clay, as though reminding the visitor that legends, too, pass through metamorphosis.

Championship Jerseys and Legendary Equipment

From football's realm come the shirts of Real Madrid's 2016-17 triumph, Barcelona's 2009-10 symphony, a Chicago Bulls jersey signed by LeBron James, Italy's 2006 World Cup shirt, Germany's from 2014, Chelsea's from their European nights, and England's shirt from the sacred final of 1966. Tom Brady's jersey gleams like a relic from a different continent of mythology. Basketballs, once spun on the fingertips of Bryant, Magic Johnson, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, now rest in patient dignity. Tiger Woods' clubs, veterans of the PGA Championship, the Masters, the U.S. Open, sit nearby, steeped in golf's quiet thunder. Cadel Evans' cycling shirt, worn and signed, speaks of lone ascents and long roads. And in a single frame, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, signatures entwined, seem to smile out at destiny itself.

The Crown Jewels of the Collection

Most commanding of all are two garments that appear almost haloed: the 2012 United States basketball team's shirt, and the iconic jersey of the 1992 Dream Team, objects that seem to hum with the pulse of an era. They are flanked by further treasures: Messi again, Ronaldo again, Steven Gerrard; Stallone's Rocky glove; those of Tyson and Tyson Fury; Pogba's signed boot; and the match-worn shoes of Sterling, Markovic, and Zaha. The room unfolds endlessly, a constellation of devotion.

The Global Rise of Sports Memorabilia Collecting

Collecting sports memorabilia is not just a pastime; it is an inheritance of memory. It has become a global continent unto itself, home to record-breaking auctions and quiet, private pilgrimages. It beckons both the sentimental enthusiast and the calculating investor, for here one may hold not only an object, but a piece of athletic history rendered almost immortal.

Sports memorabilia is a universe of shapes and textures: cards, shirts, stumps, racquets, photographs, ticket stubs that once trembled in pockets as history was made. Each relic carries cultural weight, emotional resonance, the faint heartbeat of a moment that refuses to die. Across the world, this realm has grown with unusual vigor. American sports and football dominate its peaks; the Olympics continue to define its ceremonial grandeur. The rare items, those associated with champions, are chased with near-religious fervor. The auction rooms echo with rivalry: investors, collectors, museums, circling one another like planets drawn to the same gravity.

Record-Breaking Sales and Authentication Standards

Some items ascend to mythology. The shirt worn by Lionel Messi at twelve years of age in the Pibes 99 tournament, his final garment before Barcelona reshaped his destiny, fetched 102,000 euros. What was once the humble cloth of a boy's dream has become the relic of a world-altering genius. Authenticity is the law of this land, enforced by custodians such as PSA, CGC, and Beckett. These guardians examine each item with monastic patience, tracing every fold and fiber, as though listening for the faint murmur of its true past. A well-preserved piece, especially when professionally graded, becomes not merely desirable but luminous.

Collectors are drawn to these items because they connect with a moment of their own history, a loved one, a remembered afternoon, an age they long to touch again. And so collecting becomes a passion renewed endlessly, each acquisition a way of renewing one's contract with time. In Nauman's study room, one senses this truth deeply: the objects do not merely sit in glass or under soft light—they whisper. They remind. They astonish. They draw the visitor into a world where sport is not merely played, but lived, where memory takes physical form, and where the past, like the glow of stadium lamps long after the match has ended, refuses to fade.

What Drives Value in Sports Memorabilia

Rarity, too, lends its spell. A single shirt worn once beneath stadium lights, a ticket that trembled in a pocket during a night remembered by millions, these objects, few in number, draw collectors as stars draw navigators. They shine all the brighter because time has not spawned their equals. Condition adds its own lyricism: the pristine, professionally graded item, unmarred by the years, seems to pause the world, as though the moment it belonged to still lingers within it. Yet perhaps the greatest force of all is historical resonance. When an artifact is tied to the deeds of giants, when it remembers a goal that shifted a nation's breath, a punch that altered the fate of a bout, a leap that defied gravity, its significance becomes something more transcendent than price. Such pieces are not just bought; they are inherited. They are the custodians of memory.

Consider, for instance, the jersey worn by Michael Jordan as he strode into the semi-final of the McDonald's Open in Paris on October 17th, 1997. In that garment, the fabric seems almost aware of the movements it once housed, the rise, the glide, the implacable certainty of a man who played basketball as though conversing with the air. Today, its value is measured in thousands of euros, but its true worth lies beyond price. Jordan remains one of the few whose relics can still command the hush of reverence.

The Digital Generation Enters the Market

A new generation, raised on screens that carry the world's archive in miniature, has entered this realm with eagerness. Technology has loosened the old hinges: items once guarded in distant rooms now travel across digital landscapes, appearing before buyers who need not touch them to feel their allure. Ease of purchase has fanned the flames of demand; collectors, no longer bound by geography or era, stride freely into markets once thought arcane. Why, then, does the world seem suddenly alive with this fever? Perhaps because collectors have begun to seek alternative investments, turning their gaze from the austere walls of galleries to the beating heart of sport. Memorabilia, once a niche affection, is now a refuge for those who wish to own not only wealth but memory. It is the art form of the everyday miracle.

Nostalgia plays its gentle part. Millennials and Gen Z, rediscovering the heroes of their childhoods, move through auctions as one walks through the rooms of an old house, surprised at every turn by the fragrance of the past. Online marketplaces have made it effortless to buy and sell, and so the industry thrives, buoyed by auctions whose headlines travel the world before the gavel cools. And what treasures rise to the summit of this great mountain of longing?

The Most Expensive Sports Memorabilia Ever Sold

The most expensive relic ever sold is Babe Ruth's World Series jersey from 1932, USD 24.1 million for a cloth that still seems to pulse with the myth of baseball's grandest figure. It shattered all previous records, outstripping even the celebrated Mickey Mantle card whose immaculate condition preserved seventy years of story. Obviously, these are the items that may not be within the acquisition powers of Nauman, still you look into his eyes, and you receive a distinct message, let's live a little longer to have a hand on such stuff.

There are others, too: another of Babe Ruth's jerseys fetching millions; Michael Jordan's 1998 Finals shirt, sold for over USD 10 million; and Diego Maradona's jersey from the 1986 "Hand of God" match, a European record at USD 9.2 million, the controversy made sacred by time. These pieces are more than garments; they are reliquaries. Within their folds lie the breaths of crowds, the urgency of final minutes, the dreams of nations. To behold them is to sense a faint vibration, as though the echo of some distant roar still stirs within their threads.

Bradman's Baggy Green and Other Cricket Treasures

And in collections such as Nauman's, vast, reverent, curated with the devotion of a medieval archivist, the past does not rest. It sings. Not long ago, in a quiet saleroom in Sydney, a relic of unmistakable lineage was lifted into the light: Donald Bradman's Baggy Green. Under the stroke of the auctioneer's gavel, it found a new owner for AU $479,700. The sum, impressive as it is, tells only part of the story. What truly shone that day was the enduring devotion to objects once worn by national legends, garments that carry within their fibers the breath of innings played, the solitude of dressing rooms, the pulse of great afternoons. Such artifacts do more than commemorate; they preserve the heartbeat of an age. Now Nauman may not have afforded Bradman's cap, he still has his 1948 blazer and two bats, one from 1930, and the other from 1934, tours to England (match played).

Could You Own a Hidden Treasure

And so arises the question, half quaint and half solemn: Do you yourself possess a hidden gem? Many do, without knowing it. A shoebox in a cupboard, a drawer long undisturbed, the quiet attic of a childhood home, these hold the small talismans of lives once vivid. Trading cards, signed photographs, tickets browned by time, jerseys folded and forgotten, these humble keepsakes may yet awaken into significance if brought before the eyes of a collector who reads history in the humblest ink. It is astonishing how the seemingly ordinary can reveal its worth. A 1999 Pokemon Charizard card, once exchanged by schoolchildren in playgrounds, rose at auction to USD $420,000. Such moments remind us that nostalgia, like gold, lies buried until the right light strikes it. What began as a child's delight may, years later, be discovered resting on the brink of rarity, waiting for a hand to lift it into recognition.

The Science and Soul of Memorabilia

Jerseys hold history, experience, and DNA, one observes, with the calm certainty of one well acquainted with the alchemy of collections. Fans will always be searching for the rare gem. In those few words lies the quiet truth: a shirt may outlive the roar of a stadium because it carries, quite literally, the imprint of endeavor.

Beyond shirts and cards, the world of sports relics offers other wonders, game-used bats, balls softened by the thud of contact, racquets that once traced arcs of triumph across a court. Even torches, those brief flames in a long Olympic procession, rise again in the marketplace. Here stands the official torch of the XXXIII Olympic Games of Paris, designed by Mathieu Lehanneur; a mere 1,500 were made, and its estimate reaches 20 to 25000 euros. Not far behind, the London torch of 1948, its flame long extinguished, still carries a pre-sale estimate of four to six thousand euros. Objects, when touched by ceremony, seldom lose their majesty.

So it is in the world of memorabilia: relics become storytellers, and collectors become the quiet custodians of memory. The past lives on, not in noise, but in the tender permanence of things preserved.

KEY POINTS:

Dr. Nauman Niaz maintains potentially the world's largest private sports memorabilia collection, housed in Islamabad
His collection features rare cricket items, including match-used bats from Don Bradman, WG Grace, Victor Trumper, and Ranjitsinhji
The museum contains signed memorabilia from sports legends, including Muhammad Ali, Diego Maradona, Michael Jordan, and Lionel Messi
Nauman began collecting at age seven after attending a Pakistan vs New Zealand match where Javed Miandad scored 163
His collection includes 25 rare cricket books, some dating back to 1816, with first editions and personally inscribed copies
The two-volume Collector's Eye publication (2021) documents his collection alongside only David Frith's archive receiving similar treatment

ABOUT THE WRITER: Dr. Michael Down is a PhD in Physics, owner of Boundary Books, London, publisher, author, memorabilia collector and dealer, and a huge Bob Dylan fan.