NBA: Wembanyama’s first jersey with the Spurs sold for $762,000 at auction

2023-11-22 12:29:10

15 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists and the start of his NBA career. On October 25, Victor Wembanyama took his first steps on the American courts. If he had “missed” his debut under the colors of the San Antonio Spurs with an overtime defeat against Dallas (119-126), the French giant made history. A much-awaited debut transformed with a card in his fifth game against Phoenix (38 points, 10 rebounds) before his team’s relapse and nine defeats in a row.

But the main thing is there for “Wemby”, he is in the NBA, he is progressing and the American league is already a fan of him. Proof of this is that the jersey worn during his first NBA match against the Mavericks sold this Wednesday at auction for staggering sums. His tunic flocked with his now usual number 1 went for $762,000. Sotheby’s, the famous auction housefounded in London in 1744 and now based in New York, was only expecting between $80,000 and $120,000.

Wembanyama before Messi

Earlier in November, a collector’s card of the player and one of his jerseys worn in Summer League this summer before the start of the season were acquired for $110,000 and $60,000 respectively. With this sum of 762,000 dollars, Wembanyama is ahead of the price of LeBron James and Stephen Curry jerseys in this auction.

This auction precedes the also highly anticipated auction of Lionel Messi jerseys. A lot of six tunics worn by the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner during Argentina’s victory at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, estimated at more than $10 million, will be submitted to buyers in December. These are the jerseys that the captain of the world champions wore in the first halves of the group matches against Saudi Arabia and Mexico, and those subsequently worn in the knockout matches successively against Australia , the Netherlands, Croatia and France in the final.

If the estimate exceeding $10 million (9.15 million euros) is correct, the lot could threaten the record for the most expensive sporting object ever sold, according to Sotheby’s. Until now, the record is held by a jersey of basketball legend Michael Jordan at the Chicago Bulls, during the 1998 NBA finals, taken last year for 10.1 million dollars. A part (unspecified) of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to the UNICAS project, an initiative of a Barcelona hospital specializing in rare childhood diseases.