One Bid, $12.26 Million: Jordan's Game 3 'Last Dance' Jersey Sets a Record

It only took one bid. Michael Jordan's game-worn jersey from Game 3 of the 1998 NBA Finals sold Tuesday night for $12,260,000, a record for an NBA jersey.

The previous record belonged to another jersey from the same series. Jordan's Game 1 jersey went for $10.1 million at Sotheby's in September 2022.

This one was sold by collector Rob Gough through Joopiter, the online auction house curated by Pharrell Williams. It had been projected to go for $10 million to $15 million, and according to The Athletic, it got a single bid before the auction closed.

The game

Game 3 wasn't a classic. It was a rout. The Bulls beat the Jazz 96-54 to take a 2-1 lead, and Jordan had 24 points, three rebounds and two assists. Chicago won the title in six games, the last of Jordan's six championships, and he announced his second retirement in January 1999.

How it got here

The jersey has an NBA Finals patch on the chest, an NBA Authentics tag and a size 50 tag. It was authenticated by MeiGray in 2015 and photo-matched to two Getty Images pictures from the game.

Gough bought it in 2023. Before him it belonged to Bill Thoma of Chicago, who wrote in a 2015 letter that he'd bought it years earlier from a New Jersey memorabilia dealer, who in turn got it from a close associate of Jordan.

The Last Dance documentary made that season more famous than it already was. The price tags keep following.