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A piece of NBA history found in an Oregon thrift shop sold at auction for nearly 30,000 times what it cost.
A warmup jacket belonging to Wilt Chamberlain during his time with the Los Angeles Lakers somehow ended up in a Value Village near Portland, where it was found by 19-year-old Quinn Brown.
Brown, who thrifts regularly, paid $3 for the jacket, but on Monday, it sold at Sotheby’s for $89,600, reports Dan Hajducky of ESPN.
Prior to this sale, Brown had never sold anything for above about $250, reported Casey Parks of The Washington Post, who broke the story.
At least part of the big price tag is due to the jacket’s pedigree.
A Championship-Caliber Coat
Sotheby’s had the jacket’s authenticity verified using photo matching, Hajducky reports.
“The jacket turned out to not only be legitimate but a significant piece of Chamberlain and Lakers memorabilia: The jacket was ‘likely’ used throughout the 1971-72 NBA season but was definitively matched to the 1972 NBA Finals, Chamberlain’s second title and the Lakers’ first championship Los Angeles; Chamberlain also won Finals MVP, his first as the award wasn’t introduced until 1969,” he wrote. “The jacket was also matched to the 1972-73 NBA season, Chamberlain’s last in which he set the single-season record for field goal percentage (72.7%) that wasn’t broken until the 2019-20 season.”
Sotheby’s had estimated that the jacket could go for as much as $250,000, Parks reported.
While that figure wasn’t reached, nearly $90,000 is quite a nice figure to get back on a $3 investment.
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