The 10 most expensive sports memorabilia ever sold

Sports memorabilia is the clearest market there is for a simple idea: the object is almost worthless and the moment attached to it is not. A grey flannel shirt is a grey flannel shirt until you can prove a particular man wore it on a particular afternoon in 1932. Everything below turns on that proof, which is also why the field has better documentation habits than most collecting markets.

Each figure is the price reported at the time of the sale, with the house and the date. Two entries are groups of items sold as one lot rather than single objects, and are marked as such.

1. Babe Ruth's 1932 World Series "called shot" jersey — $24.12 million

Heritage Auctions, Dallas, August 2024, and the highest price ever paid for any sports collectible. Ruth wore it in Game 3 at Wrigley Field on 1 October 1932, the game in which he is said to have pointed at the outfield before hitting a home run off Charlie Root. Two photo-matching firms authenticated it. A third had tried and failed to match it three times between 2019 and 2022, which is worth knowing: even at this level, provenance is an argument rather than a fact.

2. The Jordan and Bryant dual Logoman card — $12.932 million

Heritage Auctions, bidding closed on 23 August 2025, Kobe Bryant's birthday. A single card from the 2007-08 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection, signed by both players and carrying NBA logo patches cut from each man's jersey. One copy exists. The estimate was six million dollars; the price includes buyer's premium. Three buyers went in together, one of them the investor Kevin O'Leary. It is the most expensive trading card of any kind.

3. The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, graded SGC 9.5 — $12.6 million

Heritage Auctions, August 2022, including buyer's premium. Mantle's first Topps card, and the best-preserved example known of a card that was famously dumped into the Atlantic when Topps could not sell its surplus. This one came out of a New Jersey find made by the dealer Alan Rosen in the 1980s. It held the record for any sports card for three years.

4. Michael Jordan's 1998 NBA Finals Game 1 jersey — $10,091,000

Sotheby's, New York, September 2022. Worn on 3 June 1998 against the Utah Jazz, in the series documented by The Last Dance. Jordan scored 33 points in 45 minutes and the Bulls lost. The estimate was three to five million dollars and it took twenty bids to get where it got.

5. Diego Maradona's "Hand of God" shirt — GBP 7,142,500

Sotheby's online, closed 4 May 2022, roughly nine million dollars depending on which conversion you read; reported dollar figures range from 8.9 to 9.3 million. Maradona wore it for the second half of the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England, the half containing both the handball goal and the run past four defenders that FIFA later voted the goal of the century. Seven bidders.

6. Pierre de Coubertin's Olympic Manifesto — $8.8 million

Sotheby's, New York, December 2019. Fourteen handwritten pages from 1892 in which Coubertin proposed reviving the Olympic Games. The document was thought lost for a century and turned up in a Swiss bank vault in the 1990s. The high estimate was one million dollars. Three bidders fought over it for twelve minutes and it sold for nearly nine times the top estimate.

7. Michael Jordan's "Dynasty Collection" of six sneakers — $8,032,000

Sotheby's, February 2024, sold as a single lot. One game-worn, signed shoe from each of the six games in which Jordan clinched an NBA title: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 1998. He gave them to the Bulls' long-serving press officer. Individually they are six shoes; together they are a complete set, and the completeness is what made the number.

8. Lionel Messi's six 2022 World Cup shirts — $7.8 million

Sotheby's, closed December 2023, again a single lot, price including buyer's premium. The first-half shirts from six matches of Argentina's winning campaign, ending with the final against France. The whole lot attracted three bids. Compare that with the twenty bids on the Jordan jersey: a very high price and a very thin contest are not the same thing.

9. Kobe Bryant's debut Lakers jersey — $7,004,000

Sotheby's, April 2025. The gold number 8 from 1996-97, photo-matched to seven occasions including his first media day and his regular-season debut on 3 November 1996. The same jersey sold in 2013 for $115,242. Nothing about the shirt changed in twelve years.

10. The T206 Honus Wagner — $6,606,296

Robert Edward Auctions, closed August 2021. This is the one entry on the list with a clean public split between the two numbers that matter: the hammer price was $5,505,247 and a twenty per cent buyer's premium took it to the total above. Wagner reportedly had the card pulled from production in about 1909, leaving roughly sixty in existence. Bidding opened in late July with a one million dollar reserve and ran for three weeks.

What a charity auction can take from this

Start with the estimates. The Olympic Manifesto was estimated at up to one million and made 8.8. The Jordan Finals jersey was estimated at three to five million and made ten. Shohei Ohtani's 50/50 home run ball opened at five hundred thousand dollars in 2024 and closed at 4.392 million. Auction houses that do this for a living still set opening numbers well below where they expect to land, because a low opening is not a discount — it is what gets the first bid in early enough for a contest to develop. The guide covers how to choose them for your own lots.

Second, provenance is the product. Every single item above sold on paperwork: photo-matching reports, grading slabs, a named consignor, a documented chain of custody. Your gala does not need forensic photo analysis, but the principle transfers exactly. "Dinner for eight" raises less than "dinner for eight cooked in your own kitchen by the chef at the restaurant on the corner, who has done this once before and it went until two in the morning." Say who is giving it, what the winner actually receives, and one true detail. Three sentences is enough. The page for charities and galas has examples.

Third, note how often the same object comes back. The Bryant jersey went from 115,000 dollars to 7 million in twelve years, and the Wagner card had been sold repeatedly before 2021. Prices are set by who is in the room on the night, not by the object. Two determined bidders make a record; twenty polite ones make an average. When you plan a lot list, the question for each significant item is which two guests will refuse to lose it.

Fourth, all of these were decided at the end. Online sales in this field extend automatically when a bid lands in the closing minutes, precisely so that a hard cut-off cannot decide the result. That behaviour, plus the countdown and the running total on the screen, is set out on the how it works page, and if something is unclear the help pages go into detail. You can build a lot list and rehearse a whole evening before committing to anything: there is a walk-through at getting started.

Prices as reported at the time of sale; figures include buyer's premium where the houses stated it.