Our sports heroes are held in high regard and we would do a lot to mirror them. Well in this case someone spent over 2 million dollars for the love of their favourite sportsman.
In 1998, Michael Jordan laced up a pair of his iconic black and red Air Jordan 13s to bring home a Bulls victory during Game 2 of his final NBA championship — and now they are the most expensive sneakers ever to sell at auction.
The game-winning sneakers sold for $2.2 million at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday, smashing the sneaker auction record of $1.47 million, set in 2021 by a pair of Nike Air Ships that Jordan wore earlier in his career.
Last year, Jordan’s Game 1 jersey, also from the 1998 finals, became the most expensive item of worn sports memorabilia to sell at auction when it fetched $10.1 million at a Sotheby’s sale.
Brahm Wachter, Sotheby’s head of streetwear and modern collectables says
“Michael Jordan game-worn sports memorabilia has proven time and time again to be the most elite and coveted items on the market,”
“However, items from his ‘Last Dance’ season are of a greater scale and magnitude as seen with our record-breaking sale of his Game 1 jersey in 2022.”
The pair of sneakers sold Tuesday were worn during Game 2, in Salt Lake City, which the Bulls won 93-88 after losing Game 1, with Jordan scoring 37 points. They are the last pair of black and red Air Jordan 13s that Jordan ever wore on the court for an NBA game, a press release from Sotheby’s noted.
Following Game 2, Jordan signed and gifted the set of worn shoes to the ball boy in the visitor’s locker room, as he was known to do, according to Sotheby’s.
Other top lots included one of Kobe Bryant’s LA Lakers shooting shirts, which sold for over $406,000, and a soccer jersey, worn by the late Pelé on his debut for the New York Cosmos in 1975, that sold fetched over $177,000.
(Source: CNN)