A jersey worn by Michael Jordan during his final championship run with the Chicago Bulls is heading to auction, with bidding expected to reach at least $10 million.
Auction house Joopiter will conduct the sale, with bidding set to run until Sept. 15. The jersey comes from the 1998 NBA Finals, when Jordan led Chicago to his sixth and final championship with the franchise.
The white Bulls jersey was worn by Jordan on June 7, 1998, during Game 3 of the Finals against the Utah Jazz at the United Center.
Chicago dominated Utah 96-54 that night to move 2-1 ahead in the series. Jordan led all scorers with 24 points while playing 32 minutes.
Joopiter expects the jersey to attract bids of at least $10 million, a figure supported by the previous record established by another Jordan jersey from the same Finals.
The jersey Jordan wore in Game 1 of the 1998 series sold for $10.1 million in 2022, setting a record for game-worn sports memorabilia. The latest jersey is entering the market four years later, with demand for such collectibles having grown considerably.
Barry Meisel, founder of sports memorabilia company MeiGray, said items worn by Jordan remain particularly difficult for collectors to obtain compared with memorabilia from current NBA stars.
“Jordan remains a very, very, very rare relic, certainly in comparison to the GOATs of today — the LeBrons, the Stephen Currys, because it was a different era,” Meisel told The Athletic. “There were no game-worn jersey programs. Teams weren’t putting a jersey on a player’s back every game or every couple of games.”
The jersey also carries significance because of the circumstances surrounding Chicago’s 1998 championship.
Jordan won six NBA titles with the Bulls across an eight-year period, but the final championship campaign became known as “The Last Dance.” It marked the end of an era in which Jordan, Scottie Pippen and other members of the championship-winning group played together in Chicago.
Jordan subsequently retired and remained away from the NBA for three years. He returned to the league in 2001, spending two seasons with the Washington Wizards.
With its connection to Jordan’s final Bulls title and one of the most memorable seasons of his career, the Game 3 jersey could now become another multimillion-dollar piece of basketball history.
