For most Portland thrifters, a trip to the bins means hoping for a decent vintage tee. For one 19-year-old, it turned into a six-figure score: a purple-and-gold warmup jacket once worn by Lakers icon Wilt Chamberlain. He paid just over three bucks for it in January. Now the same jacket is on the block at a New York auction house with a sky-high estimate, and local resellers and basketball diehards are watching closely.
Brown picked up the short-sleeved Lakers jacket for exactly $3.07 at a Hillsboro Goodwill outlet, according to The Oregonian. The Lincoln High graduate resells clothing full time and says he usually rolls out of bed at 6:45 a.m. so he can be at the bins by 7:45 a.m. A photo he posted of the find eventually landed in front of specialists at Sotheby's, who reached out and helped move the jacket into the big leagues, per KPTV.
Sotheby's authentication and auction details
According to Sotheby's, the jacket is Lot 14 in its Summer Sports Marquee sale, estimated at $150,000 to $250,000 and offered with no reserve. The lot listing states that the warmup was photo-matched to images of Chamberlain wearing it during the 1972 NBA Finals and the 1972-73 season, lists the provenance simply as “Discovered at Goodwill,” and notes that bidding runs through July 20, with the current price updating on the online catalog.
Where this sits in the memorabilia market
Authentic, game-worn Chamberlain items are notoriously scarce and tend to pull in serious money; his 1972 Finals jersey hammered for $4.9 million at auction, as reported by ESPN. Other verified Chamberlain pieces have crossed the block for five-figure amounts, and local coverage points out that when an item is fully authenticated and photo-matched to a championship run, even a warmup jacket can jump into the six-figure tier, per Willamette Week.
What Quinn plans to do with the sale
Brown says he plans to stash most of the proceeds and “likely invest” a portion in an index fund to build long-term security, a strategy he discussed with The Oregonian. He also says he will keep digging through the bins, noting that he posts his finds to Depop and spends as much as 20 hours a week thrifting, and that this Lakers score feels like a once-in-a-lifetime stroke of luck, per KPTV.
