07/20/26 06:10:00
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07/20 18:05 CDT Wilt Chamberlain Lakers jacket found by a teen at a thrift
store fetches over $89,000 at auction
Wilt Chamberlain Lakers jacket found by a teen at a thrift store fetches over
$89,000 at auction
By CLAIRE RUSH
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) --- A warmup jacket worn by Wilt Chamberlain during the
1972 NBA finals that was bought by a teenager for $3.07 at an Oregon thrift
store sold for $89,600 at auction on Monday.
Quinn Brown had been eyeing a massive bin of clothes at a Goodwill store
outside Portland in January when he saw someone toss a Lakers jacket with
Chamberlain's name on it back on the pile. Brown, who resells used clothes
online, quickly grabbed it.
The jacket was auctioned by Sotheby's, which had estimated its value between
$150,000 and $250,000 before bidding closed Monday. It received a total of 48
bids, according to the auction house.
Described on Sotheby's website as an "extraordinary piece of memorabilia," the
short-sleeved yellow warmup jacket was worn by Chamberlain during the 1972 NBA
finals, in which the Los Angeles Lakers beat the New York Knicks.
"I didn't even think that finding something like this was possible," Brown
said. "I got very, very lucky."
Chamberlain, an NBA Hall of Famer viewed as one of the all-time greats, played
in the league from 1959 to 1973. He won two championship rings --- one with the
Philadelphia 76ers in 1967, and another with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1972. He
holds the record for most points scored by a player in a single game, netting
100 points in a 1962 match.
For the past three years, Brown has been reselling clothes online after finding
them in thrift stores. The most expensive item he had sold previously was a
T-shirt of Sub Pop Records, the indie label that signed Nirvana in 1989 and
released the band's first album. It went for $250.
After buying the Chamberlain jacket back in January, Brown searched online to
see if it was worth something. He found a picture on Google of Chamberlain
wearing such a jacket and compared it to the one he had.
In examining the Lakers patch on the front, he noticed certain small stitching
details that matched the photo. He also looked up the measurements of a
different jersey worn by Chamberlain, a towering figure at 7 feet, 1 inch (2.2
meters) tall, and discovered that they nearly aligned.
"I really just wanted to make sure, because it was so hard to believe at the
time," he said, adding that he had only ever read about such serendipitous
thrift findings.
When he posted a photo of the jacket on social media, Sotheby's contacted him
about consigning the jacket to the auction house. Brown agreed, and an armored
van came to pick it up.
Sotheby's then did its own photo verification and determined that the jacket
was worn by Chamberlain during the 1972 finals, in which he was named the
finals MVP.
"Photomatching a piece of game-worn clothing to a specific Finals series, for a
player of this era, is genuinely exceptional," Sotheby's website says. "As
photomatched items worn by Chamberlain become exceedingly rare, this jacket is
a piece of sports history."
It is not the first Chamberlain item from the 1972 finals to fetch a hefty sum
under the hammer: A game jersey he wore during the series sold for $4.9 million
at Sotheby's in 2023, the fourth most expensive NBA jersey ever sold by the
auction house.
As for his thrifted find, Brown said: "That was as good as it gets."
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