It took Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski 15 years and five Final Four appearances to receive his first national championship ring. Now, someone will likely get the same ring for less than $5,000.
The 1991 National Championship ring given to reserve forward Christian Ast is currently up for sale on the online auction site eBay. The auction, which is set to end today at 8:19 a.m., has not yet attracted any bids as of Monday night and the seller indicated he will likely extend the length of the auction to allow for interest to grow.
Ast’s Back-to-Back Championships ring was sold in January for $8,000 and his 1992 National Championship ring was sold in 2004. Both were sold on eBay. The seller of the items said he bought the three rings from Ast “years ago.”
The 1991 National Championship was Duke’s first and came after an upset over undefeated UNLV in the Final Four. The 1992 Duke team successfully defended their title, beating Michigan in the finals. The 1991 and 1992 teams were the last to win consecutive national championships, and the University commissioned an additional ring to commemorate the accomplishment.
The man who bought the Back-to-Back ring off of eBay, who asked to remain anonymous, said he graduated from Duke in 1995 and is a casual sports memorabilia collector. He said he would not bid on the 1991 ring because he was not a student at Duke that year and because the Back-to-Back ring encompassed both championship runs.
“I think it’s the most special of the three,” the buyer said. “In addition to being a collector, I wanted to make sure the ring didn’t end up in the wrong hands.”
“I recently got married, and so I had a number of my Duke friends over,” he added. “I showed them the ring and they couldn’t believe it was ever for sale. It is a great item.”
Ast, a 6-foot-8 scholarship forward, played a total of 95 minutes in his two years at Duke. A Heidelburg, Germany native, Ast announced his intention to transfer during the 1992 Final Four and left for American University shortly after the season in search of more playing time. The man who bought the items from Ast and is now trying to sell the third ring wrote in an e-mail that he met Ast at a basketball playground in Germany and Ast soon asked him if he would like to buy the rings.
“I know some guys on the basketball team, and we all agreed that Christian Ast was the most likely player to sell his ring—having only been on the team for two years, living in Germany and then transferring to American, which puts his emotional link to the team at a real low,” the current owner of the Back-to-Back ring wrote in an e-mail.
The minimum bid for the 1991 ring has been placed at $3,600, with $5,000 needed to buy the ring directly. Despite the high price, some current students have expressed interest in purchasing the 1991 ring, possibly through a collective effort.
“I definitely would try to get people together to buy it,” freshman Matt Ogren said. “It’s a piece of Duke history. I probably couldn’t think of any Duke memorabilia that would be more special or unique.”
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