A 19-year-old Portland thrift store regular bought a gold-and-purple Los Angeles Lakers warm-up jacket for $3.07 in January at a Goodwill bin. The garment was later authenticated as having been worn by NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain during the 1972 NBA Finals.
What started as a routine early-morning treasure hunt inside a Portland thrift store bin transformed into an astonishing sports memorabilia discovery. When Quinn Brown spotted a vintage basketball jacket being discarded by another shopper, he seized the moment. Little did the teenager know that his spare-change purchase would land him a major payday through a high-profile New York auction house.
This is Truly a once in a lifetime find,
Quinn Brown wrote on Instagram in January. I am so grateful this jacket has landed in my hands.
Brown, 19, has been reselling his thrift-store clothing finds online for the past three years. When he saw someone toss the short-sleeved Lakers jacket with “Chamberlain” on the back into a bin of clothes outside Goodwill, Brown grabbed it for his online shop.
The Goodwill Find and Quick Authentication
Brown, a Lincoln High School graduate, found the jacket at one of the three metro-area Goodwill Outlet locations. He would not reveal which, stating, I don’t want a ton of people to start coming there.
I started, I don’t know, four or five years ago, just thrifting, looking for clothes for myself, and it kind of just snowballed over the years,
Brown said on The Jake and Spike Show.
It’s grown into something pretty big.
I would say I have a good eye for fashion,
Brown said. His best find during his bargain-binning adventures was a vintage T-shirt from the Seattle-based record label Sub Pop, which sold for $250 after he snagged it for a dollar — until he came upon a certain gold-yellow warmup jacket.
Quinn Brown and the Goodwill Outlet Discovery
I was in Portland, Oregon. I get up at 7 a.m. and just go through these bins for hours,
Brown said. They wheel out these bins filled with clothes, and then it’s just looking through piles and piles of clothes. Then, I saw some guy around my age holding up a jacket that I could tell looked really good.
How could you tell?
KIRO host Jake Skorheim asked.
I could tell it was really old. I mean, I have a good eye for vintage items, so just based on looking at it, I was thinking ’70s or ’80s,
Brown said. So I kind of just waited by him, and he decided he didn’t want it. Probably too big for him. I mean, not probably, definitely, but he decided he didn’t want it.
He just threw it in front of me, and I immediately grabbed it,
he recalled to the outlet.
Brown said he paid $3.07 for the jacket — but suspected it might be something special. Then he did some research. Brown found an online photo of Chamberlain wearing a jacket that looked very similar. He also discovered that the four-time league MVP’s jersey measurements closely matched those of the jacket.
Sotheby’s Authentication and the 1972 Finals Match
Sotheby’s Authentication of the Wilt Chamberlain Jacket
After he posted a photo of the jacket online, Brown was contacted by Sotheby’s about consigning it for auction. He took the auction house up on the offer, and the jacket was whisked away in an armored vehicle to be authenticated by the New York-based auction house.
They said your jacket has been matched to the 1972 NBA Finals. I knew the NBA Finals jersey sold for $4.9 million. That’s the jersey he wore under my jacket, Brown said
Sotheby’s photomatched the jacket to three images: an undated photo from the 1972-73 season, a photo from a January 1973 game and a photo from a 1972 home game against the Knicks that was determined to be from either Game 1 or Game 2 of the NBA Finals. Chamberlain had 12 points and 19 rebounds in Game 1, a 114-92 Lakers loss, and 23 points and 24 rebounds in Game 2. Verified by Sotheby’s auction house, it was a warmup jacket worn by NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain at least three times, including during the 1972 NBA Finals in which the Lakers defeated the New York Knicks in five games and Chamberlain was named the series MVP.
Chamberlain, who died in 1999 at the age of 63, is widely regarded as one of the sport’s most dominant players of all time. Known as The Big Dipper,
he won seven consecutive scoring titles from 1959 to 1966 and averaged 50.4 points per game in the 1961-62 season, according to NBA.com. He still holds the single-game scoring record of 100 points, set in 1962.
This jacket is an extraordinary piece of memorabilia from Chamberlain’s final chapter in the NBA,
Sotheby’s writes in its promotional materials for the Summer Sports Marquee
auction.
A similar Chamberlain warm-up jacket, worn during the 1968–69 season, sold in 2022 for $56,400 at Heritage Auctions. A representative from that auction house says the market has sweetened since then, as Wilt Chamberlain gear has proven to be some of the most coveted NBA memorabilia. In 2023, Chamberlain’s 1972 Finals jersey sold for $4.9 million at Sotheby’s, making it the third-most expensive NBA jersey ever sold at auction, behind only Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan jerseys.
Auction Results and What Comes Next
Summer Sports Marquee Auction Results at Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s listed the jacket for auction with an estimated value of $150,000 to $250,000. Bidding opened on July 1 and was scheduled to run through July 20.
Seven months after Brown found the item in a Goodwill bin for $3.07, it sold at auction for $89,600.
With the auction concluded, Brown looks back on the life-changing experience of turning a bargain-bin find into a nearly $90,000 payout from a once-in-a-lifetime piece of basketball history.
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