A teenager’s routine trip to an Oregon thrift store produced the kind of discovery collectors spend decades chasing.
Nineteen-year-old Quinn Brown paid just $3.07 for a yellow Los Angeles Lakers warmup jacket bearing Wilt Chamberlain’s name. The same jacket, authenticated as one Chamberlain wore during the 1972 NBA Finals, sold through Sotheby’s on Monday for $89,600 after attracting 48 bids.
Brown, who resells secondhand clothing online, spotted the jacket after another shopper tossed it back into a large bin at a Goodwill store outside Portland. He quickly grabbed it, researched old photographs and eventually connected with Sotheby’s, which used photo-matching to verify its remarkable history.
The short-sleeved jacket dates to the Finals in which the Lakers defeated the New York Knicks and Chamberlain was named Finals MVP. Memorabilia tied directly to that championship run is especially valuable, although the final price landed below Sotheby’s original estimate of $150,000 to $250,000.
Even so, turning $3.07 into $89,600 represents a return of nearly 30,000 times the original purchase price.
It may be the greatest thrift-store assist Wilt Chamberlain never knew he made.
