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Kicker: Three-dollar legend

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WORLD Radio - Kicker: Three-dollar legend

An L.A. Lakers jacket bought for $3.00 and change at Goodwill was authenticated as Wilt Chamberlain’s 1972 NBA Finals warmup and sold for nearly $90,000.


Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Most thrift-store victories are pretty modest: Maybe you find a vintage T-shirt. A decent lamp. Or a pair of jeans with the tag still on it.

But teenage thrifter Quinn Brown was digging through bins at a Goodwill near Portland, Oregon, when he came across something potentially amazing: a yellow L.A. Lakers warmup jacket.

Total cost: $3.07, pretty good price. An absurdly good price for an item tied to one of the greatest players in NBA history.

The name on the back, the name of Wilt Chamberlain, was good evidence. But it was the tape measure that sealed the deal.

BROWN: I looked at the measurements of the jacket. Wilt Chamberlain being seven foot one, the jacket measured 33 inches long, so would have gone down almost to my knees. I looked at it and it matched up.

You bet it did. The jacket was authenticated as a warmup Chamberlain wore during the ’72 NBA Finals, when the Lakers won the championship.

Sotheby’s auctioned it off, and the final price was just under 90 grand.

A nearly 3 million percent return.

Numbers Chamberlain himself might’ve admired.

It’s The World and Everything in It.


WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

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