A pair of Michael Jordan’s shoes he wore during his rookie season in 1985 sold for $560,000 at an auction on Sunday, according to Sotheby’s. Ten bidders competed in a 10-day online auction, and the bidding war drove up the value of the shoes by $300,000 in the last 20 minutes. The $560,000 mark surpasses the record that set in July 2019. At that time, the Nike 1972 Nike Waffle Racing Flat’ Moon Shoe’ sold for $437,500.
Bram Wachter, the Director of eCommerce Development for Sotheby’s was excited the shoes were sold at a record-breaking price. “We are extremely excited about today’s record-breaking result!” he said in a statement. “Building off the momentum from our debut sneaker sale last year, which previously set the record for a pair of sneakers with the Nike Moon Shoe, we wanted to set the bar even higher for our second sneaker sale. We saw tremendous bidding up until the moment the sale closed, with the value more than doubling in the final hour alone.”
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A pair of Michael Jordan’s game-worn Air Jordan 1 shoes from 1985 sell for $560,000, more than three times the estimated price, the auction house says https://t.co/wOjdU6QgSD
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) May 17, 2020
The shoes, which are the Air Jordan 1s, were a big part of Jordan’s success in the early stages of his career. With him winning Rookie of the Year in 1995, the sneakers became very popular, which led to his brand eventually becoming worldwide. The auction comes on the heels Jordan’s ESPN docuseries The Last Dance coming to an end. The docuseries focused on Jordan and his final years with the Chicago Bulls, but it also took a look at different players and Jordan’s path to becoming the best player in NBA history.
“You’re gonna see a lot of things that people forgot life was that way,” Jordan said on Good Morning America before ESPN released the first two episodes in April. “The thing that people are going to learn, and my kids laugh about it when they see it, but we used postage stamps back in those days, you know. Where I had to ask my mom to send my postage stamps.” During his time with the Bulls, Jordan helped the team win six championships in eight years. He also was named NBA Finals MVP six times and was a five-time winner of the MVP award. After his final season with the Bulls, Jordan retired for a couple of years before joining the Washington Wizards in 2001. He officially retired from the NBA in 2003.
