The Most Expensive Game-Worn Jerseys Ever Sold

On This Page

• Who wore it, who sold it, what it made
• A record set by one bidder
• Football sells in pounds, and the dollars drift
• Resales, the cleanest evidence there is
• Hammer, premium and what the headlines add together
• Montana, Kobe and the sales without a receipt
• Why I think the photo-match is what buyers are paying for
• Top Takeaways to Success
• Frequently Asked Questions

Babe Ruth’s New York Yankees road jersey from Game 3 of the 1932 World Series is the record, at $24,120,000, sold by Heritage Auctions in Dallas in August 2024 after more than six hours of bidding. The price includes Heritage’s standard 20 percent buyer’s premium, which puts the hammer at about $20.1 million.

What the buyer paid for was largely a set of photographs.

When the jersey last sold, in 2005, it made $940,000 and was described as “attributed to” the called shot: the right series, no proven game. Professional Sports Authenticator and MeiGray later matched it to images taken at Wrigley Field on 1 October 1932, the afternoon Ruth pointed and then hit Charlie Root’s pitch to centre field. Same flannel, same “3” on the back. Roughly twenty-six times the money.

Jerseys are priced by how precisely they can be tied to a moment, and the rest of this page is mostly that rule playing out.

Who wore it, who sold it, what it made

Eighteen public sales, ranked in US dollars. Where a sale was in pounds, the pound figure is the record and the dollar figure is an approximate conversion. “Incl.” means the published price includes the buyer’s premium.

#	Jersey	Price	Sale	Premium
1	Babe Ruth, 1932 World Series Game 3, the called shot	$24,120,000	Heritage, Dallas, 23 to 25 Aug 2024, lot 80162	Incl. (20%)
2	Michael Jordan, 1998 NBA Finals Game 3	$12,260,000	Joopiter, online, closed 29 Sep 2026	Not stated
3	Michael Jordan, 1998 NBA Finals Game 1	$10,091,000	Sotheby’s New York, online, 6 to 14 Sep 2022	Incl.
4	Diego Maradona, 1986 World Cup quarter-final	£7,142,500 (about $8.93m on the day)	Sotheby’s London, online, closed 4 May 2022	Incl.
5	Lionel Messi, 2022 World Cup, lot of six shirts	$7,800,000	Sotheby’s New York, online, closed 14 Dec 2023	Incl.
6	Kobe Bryant, 2007 to 2008 MVP season, signed	$5,800,000	Sotheby’s New York, Feb 2023	Incl.
7	Babe Ruth, Yankees road jersey, 1928 to 1930	$5,640,000	Hunt Auctions, Yankee Stadium, 15 Jun 2019	Not stated
8	Wilt Chamberlain, 1972 NBA Finals Game 5	$4,900,000	Sotheby’s New York, Sep 2023	Incl.
9	Pelé, 1958 World Cup final	$4,880,000	Sotheby’s, closed 16 Jul 2026	Incl.
10	Michael Jordan, Bulls red, 1996 to 1997 season	$4,680,000	Sotheby’s New York, Nov 2024	Incl.
10	Mickey Mantle, 1958 Yankees home opener	$4,680,000	Heritage, 21 Aug 2023	Incl.
12	Babe Ruth, Yankees, c. 1920	$4,415,658	SCP Auctions, May 2012	Not stated
13	Michael Jordan, rookie preseason, 5 Oct 1984	$4,215,000	Sotheby’s, closed 26 Mar 2025	Incl.
14	LeBron James, 2013 NBA Finals Game 7	$3,680,000	Sotheby’s New York, live, 27 Jan 2023	Incl.
15	Wayne Gretzky, 1988 Stanley Cup Final Game 4	$2,800,000	Goldin, Spring Game Used Auction, 28 Apr 2026	Not stated
16	Lou Gehrig, 1939 World Series, final Yankee Stadium appearance	$2,700,000	Christie’s New York with Hunt, 22 Oct 2025	Incl.
17	Lou Gehrig, 1937 road jersey	$2,580,000	Heritage, 17 to 18 Aug 2019	Incl.
18	Tom Brady, final NFL game, Jan 2023	$1,390,000	Sotheby’s, Nov 2023	Incl.

Rounded figures (Kobe, Wilt, Pelé, LeBron, Brady) are as the auction house announced them. Gehrig’s 1939 jersey is reported at both $2.7 million and $2,712,000.

A record set by one bidder

The newest figure on the table is the strangest.

Jordan’s white Game 3 jersey from the 1998 Finals, worn in the 96 to 54 win over Utah at the United Center on 7 June 1998, closed on Joopiter at 8.06pm Eastern on Tuesday 29 September 2026 for $12,260,000. The estimate was $10 million to $15 million.

According to The Athletic, as reported by TSN, it received one bid before closing.

So the most expensive basketball jersey ever sold was not fought over. One buyer met the seller’s expectations, and nobody else in the world chose to go higher. The seller, collector Rob Gough, had said before the sale that it could become the first sports collectible to reach $100 million. It finished at about an eighth of that.

Joopiter’s coverage does not say whether $12.26 million includes a buyer’s premium. Until it does, the comparison with Sotheby’s $10,091,000 for the Game 1 jersey (which includes Sotheby’s fees, and drew 20 bids) is not quite like for like.

Football sells in pounds, and the dollars drift

Maradona’s shirt from the 1986 quarter-final against England, the match with the Hand of God and the Goal of the Century, sold for £7,142,500 at Sotheby’s London. Bidding ran from 20 April to 4 May 2022, against an estimate of £4 million to £6 million.

Nearly every list prints it as $9.28 million or $9.3 million. That number does not survive the exchange rate.

On 20 April 2022, when bidding opened, the European Central Bank’s reference rate was 1.3054 dollars to the pound, which turns the price into about $9.32 million. On 4 May 2022, when the sale closed, the rate was 1.2508. That gives about $8.93 million.

The figure most people quote is pinned to the wrong end of a two-week sale. It does not change Maradona’s place in the table. It does change the margin: measured against $9.28 million, Jordan’s Game 1 jersey beat it by about $811,000, and at the closing-day rate by about $1.16 million.

There is a second dispute attached to this shirt. Before the sale, Maradona’s daughter Dalma said her father had changed shirts at half-time in the Mexico City heat, and that England midfielder Steve Hodge had swapped for the first-half shirt. Sotheby’s said its photo-matching tied the shirt to both second-half goals, and it sold on that basis. The shirt had been on loan to the National Football Museum in Manchester since 2002.

Messi’s entry needs its own label. The $7.8 million at Sotheby’s in December 2023 bought six shirts, each worn in the first half of one of Argentina’s 2022 World Cup matches, including the final. It was a single lot and was never split, so there is no per-shirt price, and dividing by six produces arithmetic rather than a result.

Resales, the cleanest evidence there is

A jersey that sells twice gives you something the rest of the table cannot: the same object, priced at two dates.

Pelé, 1958 World Cup final. Pelé gave the shirt to his teammate and room-mate Dida after scoring twice in Brazil’s 5 to 2 win over Sweden. It went to the Museu dos Esportes in Rio, which consigned it to Christie’s in 2004. It sold for $105,600. Sotheby’s sold it again in July 2026 for $4.88 million, about 46 times the 2004 price.

Babe Ruth, 1932. $940,000 in 2005, $24,120,000 in 2024. About 26 times, in nineteen years.

Wayne Gretzky, 1988. The jersey from his last game for Edmonton, the Game 4 that had to be replayed after a power failure at Boston Garden, made $1,452,000 at Grey Flannel in 2022 and $2,800,000 at Goldin in April 2026. Up 93 percent in four years.

Michael Jordan, 1984. NBA.com reports that his rookie preseason jersey, worn in Peoria on 5 October 1984 and believed by MeiGray to be the first he wore in an NBA game, sold for $800 in 1985. Sotheby’s sold it for $4,215,000 in March 2025.

Those four share a pattern. The early prices predate photo-matching as a routine service. The later ones follow certificates tying each shirt to a specific game, and in Ruth’s and Pelé’s cases to a specific famous moment.

Hammer, premium and what the headlines add together

Auction houses charge the buyer a commission on top of the winning bid. The headline is almost always the total, not the bid.

For Ruth that gap is visible because Heritage published the premium rate: a 20 percent premium on a $24.12 million total means roughly $4 million went to the house and about $20.1 million was the hammer.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s publish their results with fees included. Joopiter, Hunt and SCP coverage does not say, which is why those rows are marked “Not stated” rather than guessed.

The 2012 Ruth figure, $4,415,658, is an odd number. Hammers are round, so the odd total is consistent with a premium having been added, but SCP’s terms are not in the coverage, and the table leaves it unconfirmed.

One correction while on Ruth. ESPN’s report of the 2022 Jordan sale described the previous jersey record, the $5.64 million Hunt sale, as a Ruth jersey “worn circa 1918-1920”. Hunt’s sale described it as a 1928 to 1930 road jersey. The 1920 jersey is a different shirt, the SCP sale of 2012.

Ed Sherman’s book is the one to read if you want the called shot argued out properly, because the pointing may or may not have happened.

Montana, Kobe and the sales without a receipt

Joe Montana, Super Bowl XXIV. Treasure Trove announced in August 2026 that it had bought Montana’s jersey from his final Super Bowl for $1,515,000, a record for an NFL jersey. No coverage I could find names an auction house or seller, so it is reported here and not ranked. It may or may not be the Super Bowl XXIV jersey Goldin sold for $720,000 in 2023; nothing I found confirms either way.

Kobe Bryant, 2009 Finals Game 1. The jersey from his 40-point Finals game passed through Sotheby’s New York in April 2024, according to the provenance on its 2026 lot page, and was offered again in July 2026 at $1.5 million to $2.5 million. Neither result could be confirmed at a primary source, so neither is ranked.

Estimates. Several jerseys in 2026 catalogues carried estimates above $1 million. An estimate is not a sale and none is listed.

For the cards that used to hold the overall record, see the most expensive baseball cards. Jordan’s game-worn shoes from the same 1998 Finals are on the most expensive sneakers page.

Why I think the photo-match is what buyers are paying for

My read is that this table is a ranking of certainty as much as of fame.

Look at Ruth. The flannel, the “3”, the Yankees road grey were all identical in 2005 and 2024. What the 2024 buyer got that the 2005 buyer did not was a document saying this is the shirt from that at-bat. That document was worth something like $23 million. I can’t think of another collectible category where paperwork adds that much on its own.

Pelé is the same story with a smaller number. Christie’s in 2004 was selling a museum’s Pelé shirt. Sotheby’s in 2026 was selling the shirt from the 1958 final with a photo-match certificate, and the price went up 46 times.

It also explains the Jordan single bid, I think. Once the identification is settled, the field of people who will pay eight figures is tiny, and at $12 million it was apparently one person. A record set by one bidder is a real sale. It is also a thin one, and I’d treat it as softer than Ruth’s six hours of competition.

The honest caveat is that the whole category now rests on photo-matching firms being right. Maradona’s shirt sold over the objection of his own family. If a few of these matches are ever overturned, the gap between “attributed to” and “matched to” will close fast, and so will these prices.

Every other record object on this site, from stamps to cars, is on the most expensive things ever sold hub.