In 2026, a nineteen-year-old reseller bought a warm-up jacket from a Goodwill store near Portland, Oregon, for $3.07; the jacket later turned out to be Wilt Chamberlain's 1972 NBA Finals jacket, authenticated by Sotheby's and sold for $89,600 at auction. This is yet another addition to an ever-growing list of items found in thrift stores that have proven to be significant sports memorabilia.
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A bargain bin find outside Portland
Quinn Brown, a nineteen-year-old who had been reselling secondhand clothes for three years, was sorting through used clothes at a Goodwill "By-The-Pound" outlet just outside Portland on January 15, 2026, when he noticed a short-sleeved yellow jacket marked "Chamberlain" on the back had been thrown into the bin, according to OPB. He bought the jacket for $3.07 and initially expected to resell it for only a few hundred dollars, as he had found similarly obscure pieces before, according to KPTV. His highest sale to date had been a Sub Pop record-label shirt for $250, reports MyNorthwest. Brown explained that he remembered seeing a Chamberlain warm-up jacket sell for a five-figure sum years earlier, which prompted him to search for pictures of the same jacket online before posting his own find.
Verifying a jacket worn by an NBA great
Chamberlain, inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, is considered to be one of basketball’s all-time dominant players based on statistics from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In the Sports Hall of Fame , he continues to break NBA records such as scoring 100 points in one game, grabbing 55 rebounds in one game and averaging 50.4 points per game in the 1961-62 season, all records that have remained untouched for over 60 years. Following Brown's post, Sotheby's experts got in touch with him and managed to convince him to sell the jersey at the auction. Through the use of Sotheby’s photomatching technology, it was concluded that the jersey had been worn by Chamberlain during the finals in the 1971-1972 season when he had defeated the New York Knicks in five games to earn himself the title of the MVP of the finals for the first time in his career.
From $3.07 to $89,600 at Sotheby's
Sotheby's set the pre-sale estimate at $150,000–$250,000, describing it on their website as an incredible piece of memorabilia. The final bid came way under this estimate, landing at $89,600, including buyer’s premium, after 48 bids had been placed. Even so, the final price was still a remarkable return on the original $3.07 price tag of the jacket, something few pieces bought in thrift stores can compare to.
There was, in fact, a significant gap between Sotheby's estimate and the final bid, with the jacket landing $60,400 below the low end of its $150,000-$250,000 range. Such shortfalls aren't unusual for vintage game-worn memorabilia, since matching a piece to a specific game or series through photos alone is difficult. Brown's jacket, however, was one of the rarer pieces for which Sotheby's photomatching technology succeeded in linking it directly to the 1971-72 Finals.
A find that stands out even among thrift store discoveries
The prolific career of Chamberlain ensures that anything having any connection with him will be collected by somebody. He set the NBA record for career rebounds, with a total of 23,924 rebounds, was twice champion, with the Philadelphia 76ers in 1967 and with the Lakers in 1972, and is a four-time MVP, as stated by the California Sports Hall of Fame. In this light, a jacket associated with his championship period holds far more rarity value than mere career memorabilia. For Brown, the sale was the ultimate jump forward in his collecting career, as he moved from a lifetime of making little money by reselling things to selling one thing that made him a huge profit on the $3.07 that he spent. This also shows that sometimes the most valuable sports memorabilia can be found in a donation box somewhere, waiting to be discovered.
