A game-worn pair of Nike sneakers from Michael Jordan’s glory days sold for a record $560,000 — almost four times the initial estimate for the autographed shoes, Sotheby’s said.
Bidding for the “Air Jordan 1s,” custom-made for the Hall of Famer in sizes 13 and 13 1/2 in the Chicago Bulls colors, started more than a week ago in New York. The auction house earlier estimated they would fetch as much as $150,000.
Sotheby’s held an earlier record for sneakers at auction with $437,500 paid for Nike’s “Moon Shoe” last year.
The “Air Jordan 1s” came from the collection of Jordan Geller, a collector and founder of the Shoezeum, the world’s first sneaker museum, Sotheby’s said.
In the caption on their Instagram post, Sotheby’s wrote, “Slam Dunk! Michael Jordan’s #GameWorn, #Autographed Nike Air Jordan 1s sold in an online auction today for $560,000, setting a new world auction record for any pair of #sneakers – surpassing the previous auction record of $437,500 set at Sotheby’s in July 2019 by the Nike Waffle Racing Flat ‘Moon Shoe’. One of the most important basketball sneakers of all time made exclusively for the legendary NBA #ChicagoBulls player in 1985, the pair was sold to coincide with the final episode of the popular ESPN documentary ‘The Last Dance’, which spotlights the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan…”
Jordan is once again the most famous basketball player in the world following the release of “The Last Dance,” an ESPN documentary series. The 10-part series chronicle focuses on his career and how the Chicago Bulls chased their sixth NBA championship during the 1997-98 season. Each week, about 6 million viewers have tuned in to see the show.
The final two episodes air tonight.
