A good way to make a lot of money in not a lot of time is to have a thing that either once belonged to Michael Jordan or has his signature on it. Our latest example of this comes by way of Heritage Auctions, which sold the only known game-worn Jordan jersey from his time at the University of North Carolina for a cool $1.38 million.
According to ESPN, the jersey comes from Jordan’s 1982-83 campaign in Chapel Hill, when he graced the cover of Sporting News as a sophomore en route to being named an unanimous All-American. He would go on to spend one more year with the Tar Heels before jumping to the NBA and embarking on a career that most people agree was pretty good — the previous record paid for a jersey was one of his threads from his time with the Chicago Bulls, which sold for $480,000 in October.
The UNC jersey has quite the origin story, as laid out by ESPN:
The North Carolina jersey was first obtained in 1983 when equipment managers from Stanford and North Carolina swapped player jerseys after a game during the Stanford Invitational tournament at Maples Pavilion.
This isn’t the first time the jersey has been up for auction, as it sold for $63,500 in 1999, which was a record at the time.
Here’s to hoping the North Carolina equipment manager who traded the Jordan jersey to someone at Stanford got a cut of this.
