Michael Jordan's 1998 Finals Jersey Sells for a Record $14 Million
The Michael Jordan jersey $14 million headline writes itself, but the details are what make the number believable. Pennsylvania-based Hunt Auctions announced on Monday, October 12, that it had arranged a private treaty sale of the red road jersey Jordan wore in Game 2 of the 1998 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. The buyer is Ron Firman, a Miami real estate investor. The jersey is game-worn and autographed, and according to the auction house it carries a remarkably clean history: it was originally bought from the Bulls by a private collector in 2003 and has changed hands only once since then.
That provenance matters, because at this altitude the money is not really buying cloth. It is buying certainty — a documented chain from the court in Salt Lake City to the present day, for an object tied to the most mythologised season in basketball history.
The night stitched into the shirt
Game 2 was played on June 5, 1998, in Salt Lake City, with Chicago already trailing the series 0–1 and the whole "Last Dance" season threatening to end in failure. Jordan scored 37 points, with five rebounds and three assists, and the Bulls won 93–88 to level the series. Nine days later Chicago closed out its sixth championship in six games — the sixth and final title of Jordan's Bulls career — and Jordan collected his sixth Finals MVP award, a total no other player has come within two of matching.
The 1997–98 season later became the subject of the 10-part documentary The Last Dance in 2020, which introduced Jordan's final run to a generation that never saw it live and re-ignited the market for everything connected to it. That documentary effect is not sentimentality; it is visible in the price data below. Nearly every eight-figure Jordan result has come after 2020.
A ladder of records, all from one series
Put the numbers in sequence and the pattern is startling. This is now at least the third jersey from the same six-game series to clear $10 million. A Jordan jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 Finals sold at auction in 2022 for about $10.1 million. A jersey from Game 3 sold last month for about $12.3 million. The Game 2 shirt has now gone further, at $14 million. Even Jordan's footwear from this single game has set records: the shoes he wore in Game 2 were sold by Sotheby's in 2023 for $2.2 million, at the time the most valuable sneakers ever sold.
Across all sports, only one game-worn jersey has ever cost more: the New York Yankees jersey Babe Ruth wore in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series — the "called shot" game — which sold in 2024 for $24.12 million. Hunt Auctions' president, David Hunt, argued in announcing the sale that Jordan's place in the memorabilia market has now risen into an elite asset class more usually associated with iconic works of art, and that Ruth and Jordan stand apart from everyone else in American sports history. On the evidence of the last four years, that is less a sales pitch than a description of the leaderboard: the top of the jersey market is now a two-man table, and one of them last played in 1935.
Why this matters
Three things are really being priced here, and only one of them is nostalgia. The first is scarcity with paperwork: there are only so many Jordan Finals jerseys, each tied to a specific, famous game, and this one's chain of custody — one change of hands since 2003 — is exactly what serious buyers pay a premium for. The second is the documentary effect: The Last Dance converted Jordan from a retired legend into a permanently streaming one, and memorabilia markets follow attention the way stock markets follow earnings. The third is the quiet arrival of sports memorabilia as an alternative asset class, bought by investors like Firman — a real estate investor, not a memorabilia dealer — who said he was very excited about the purchase and described Jordan as admired around the world.
The honest caveats belong in the same story. This was a private sale, not a public auction, so the $14 million figure is the price as announced by the house that arranged the deal; there is no public bidding record to audit. Prices at the very top of this market rest on a thin layer of very wealthy buyers, and a record set by one private negotiation says as much about two parties' circumstances as it does about "the market." Collectors who bought Jordan material at 2021–22 peaks have learned that even blue-chip memorabilia can sit unsold when the asking price runs ahead of the next buyer's enthusiasm. None of that dents the headline — a record is a record — but it is the difference between reporting a price and understanding it.
What happens next
The obvious question is whether anything Jordan-related can go higher, and the ladder above suggests the answer depends on which shirt surfaces next. A jersey from Game 6 of the 1998 Finals — the "Last Shot" game, the most famous single performance of Jordan's career — would be the one object in this category with a credible claim to challenge even Ruth's $24.12 million. Until it appears, expect the undercard to keep rising: each new Jordan record reprices every other 1998 Finals artefact, from shoes to ticket stubs, because sellers anchor to the latest headline number. Meanwhile, the team chasing similar heat is our own Monday night story — the Bills' 37–34 overtime win over the Rams — a reminder that the memorabilia legends of 2050 are being manufactured on ordinary autumn weekends like this one. And for the week's other record-adjacent sports business, see our coverage of the WNBA Finals, where a young franchise's merchandise story is being written in real time.
Sources
Reuters (Oct 12, 2026), "Michael Jordan's Game 2 '98 Finals jersey sells for record $14 million"; Associated Press reporting via Sportsnet, NBC Sports and The Reflector (Oct 12, 2026) on the Hunt Auctions private treaty sale, buyer Ron Firman, Game 2 details (June 5, 1998; 37 points; Bulls 93, Jazz 88), the Game 1 ($10.1 million, 2022) and Game 3 (about $12.3 million, 2026) jersey sales, the jersey's chain of custody since 2003, and the 2023 Sotheby's sale of Jordan's Game 2 shoes for $2.2 million; Hunt Auctions announcement statements by president David Hunt and buyer Ron Firman, as reported by AP and Reuters.