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Wilt Chamberlain warm-up jacket bought for $3 at thrift store sells for tens of thousands
By Matt Reigle
Published July 21, 2026
A memorabilia hunter may have made the find of the century when he picked up what turned out to be a genuine Wilt Chamberlain warm-up jacket at a Goodwill store in Portland for just $3.07.
Now, that jacket has sold at auction for $89,000.
That's a profit of $88,996.93, which means most of us will be heading to our local Goodwill stores later today and tearing the place apart in search of sports memorabilia paydirt.
Of course, anything tied to the late Wilt Chamberlain is going to command top dollar, but this wasn't any old warm-up jacket. Sotheby's photo matched it to the 1972 NBA Finals and to some other photos shot during the following 1972-73 season.
Those dates are significant because he was named Finals MVP in the 1972 NBA Finals, while the 1972-73 season was his last in the NBA.
A warm-up jacket worn by NBA great Wilt Chamberlain at the tail of end of his career was found in a Goodwill for $3.07 and sold at auction for $89.000. (Photo by Walter Iooss Jr. /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images and Photo by Martin Mills/Getty Images)
According to KATU, the lucky jacket finder was Quinn Brown, a teenager who has been thrifting and selling the stuff he finds for years.
Finding a jacket for $3 and flipping it for a shade under $90,000 is about as good as it gets. The only downside was that Sotheby's actually thought it was going to sell for something in the neighborhood of $150,000 to $250,000.
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Man, just once I'd love to be on the receiving end of this kind of thrift store or antique shop luck.
Wilt Chamberlain and the Los Angeles Lakers faced the New York Knicks in the 1972 NBA Finals. (Photo by George Long/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Every time I buy something thinking it will be valuable — like a Spike Jones album or an old "Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" Taco Bell cup — it turns out to be worth barely as much as I paid for it.
Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places... the places I've gone to mostly just have crap.
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Congrats to Quinn Brown on one heck of a find.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have Goodwill bins to rummage through...
https://www.foxnews.com/outkick-sports/wilt-chamberlain-warm-up-jacket-bought-3-thrift-store-sells-tens-thousands