PORTLAND, Ore. — This sharp-eyed thrift store gave new meaning to one of Wilt Chamberlain’s nicknames -- Big Dipper.
A 19-year-old Oregon man dipped into a thrift bin at a Goodwill store in Portland and grabbed a Chamberlain warmup jacket from 1972. The jacket he bought for $3.07 sold for nearly $90,000 on Monday in a Sotheby’s auction.
The final price, including a buyer’s premium, was $89,600, Sotheby’s said. There were 48 bids, KATU reported.
“This jacket is an extraordinary piece of memorabilia from Chamberlain’s final chapter in the NBA,” Sotheby’s wrote in its auction listing for its “Summer Sports Marquee” sale.
The jacket was discovered on Jan. 15 by Quinn Brown, who was digging through clothing bins at the thrift store, Willamette Week reported. He said that he spied what looked to be a Lakers warmup jacket being held by another shopper. He saw the name “Chamberlain” on the back and a Lakers logo on the front, and Brown began planning his move.
When the other shopper tossed the jersey back into a bin, Brown drove the lane and hustled to grab it.
Wilt Chamberlain's warmup jacket, bought at an Oregon thrift store for about $3, has officially sold at auction for more than $89,000. https://t.co/sOxfMqg9WY
— KATU News (@KATUNews) July 21, 2026
“They brought in the new clothes, and for about five minutes I’m looking through with around 20 to 30 people, trying to pick some stuff out,” Brown told Willamette Week. “I see this guy with a cool Lakers jacket. He looked a year or two older than I am; maybe he resells, maybe he doesn’t. Suddenly, he tosses it back and I immediately grabbed it.”
Brown purchased it for about $3, paying by the pound under the outlet store’s pricing system, according to Sports Collectors Daily.
After researching the find, Brown contacted authentication experts and consigned it to Sotheby’s. The Champion-made gold warmup jacket was photo-matched to the 1972 NBA Finals and three regular-season games during Chamberlain’s final NBA season (1973-74) by SIA Photo Match, matched the jacket in February according to Willamette Week.
In 2023, a photo-matched jersey worn by the basketball Hall of Famer during the 1972 NBA Finals sold for $4.9 million, setting a record for Chamberlain memorabilia and for pre-1980 NBA game-worn memorabilia at the time.
It was clearly Brown’s biggest find since he began reselling clothes online three years ago. According to The Associated Press, the most expensive item he sold was a T-shirt of Sub Pop Records, the independent label that signed Nirvana in 1989 and released the band’s first album. That piece of clothing went for $250.
Brown, a graduate of Lincoln High School in Portland, did not reveal the actual Goodwill location, since there are three in the Metro Portland area, the Willamette Week reported.
“I don’t want a ton of people to start coming there,” he said.
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