Wilt Chamberlain thrift-store jacket sells for $89,600
A teenager paid $3.07 for the Lakers warmup at an Oregon Goodwill before Sotheby’s linked it to Chamberlain’s 1972 NBA Finals run.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
A yellow Los Angeles Lakers warmup jacket bought for $3.07 at an Oregon Goodwill sold Monday for $89,600 at Sotheby’s. The auction house said it verified the jacket as one Wilt Chamberlain wore during the 1972 NBA Finals, making a thrift-store find into a rare piece of basketball memorabilia.
Quinn Brown, a teenager who sells secondhand clothing online, found the short-sleeved jacket in January at a Goodwill store outside Portland, Fortune reported. Brown noticed the Lakers jacket after another shopper put it back into a large clothing bin, according to Fortune.
Sotheby’s said the item drew 48 bids. The final price landed below the auction house’s pre-sale estimate of $150,000 to $250,000.
Brown told Fortune he did not expect to come across an item of that kind. “I didn’t even think that finding something like this was possible,” he said. “I got very, very lucky.”
How the jacket was checked
After buying the jacket, Brown searched online for signs that it might be authentic, Fortune reported. He found a photo of Chamberlain wearing a similar Lakers warmup and compared the image with the jacket in his possession.
Brown focused on small details in the stitching around the Lakers patch, Fortune reported. He also compared the jacket’s size with measurements from another Chamberlain jersey and found they were close; Chamberlain was listed at 7 feet, 1 inch.
Brown said the find seemed hard to accept at first. “I really just wanted to make sure, because it was so hard to believe at the time,” he told Fortune.
After Brown posted a picture of the jacket on social media, Sotheby’s contacted him about selling it through the auction house, Fortune reported. Brown agreed, and an armored vehicle collected the item.
Sotheby’s said it conducted its own photo-matching review and concluded that Chamberlain wore the jacket during the 1972 Finals. The Lakers defeated the New York Knicks in that series, and Chamberlain was named Finals MVP, according to Sotheby’s.
On its website, Sotheby’s called the jacket an “extraordinary piece of memorabilia” and said linking a game-worn item from that era to a specific Finals series is uncommon. “As photomatched items worn by Chamberlain become exceedingly rare, this jacket is a piece of sports history,” the auction house said.
A sharp rise from past resale finds
Brown has spent about three years reselling clothing he finds in thrift stores, Fortune reported. Before the Chamberlain jacket, his highest-priced sale was a Sub Pop Records T-shirt that sold for $250; the label signed Nirvana in 1989 and released the band’s first album.
Chamberlain played in the NBA from 1959 to 1973 and won two championships: one with the Philadelphia 76ers in 1967 and one with the Lakers in 1972, Fortune reported. He also holds the NBA single-game scoring record with 100 points in a 1962 game.
Other Chamberlain memorabilia from the 1972 Finals has sold for far more. Sotheby’s sold a jersey he wore in that series for $4.9 million in 2023, which the auction house said was the fourth-highest price it had recorded for an NBA jersey.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.