Michael Jordan's '92-'93 season jersey and shorts sell for $2.6 million
A Bulls jersey and shorts worn by Michael Jordan for the season before he retired the first time sold for $2.6 million at auction over the weekend, according to auction house Heritage Auctions.
The jersey and shorts were said to have been photo-matched to 17 games from the 1992-93 season — in which Jordan and the Bulls completed the first three-peat — as well as the Oct. 18, 1993, cover of Sports Illustrated that featured a picture of His Airness from a January 1993 game that the Bulls lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
According to the auction house, the jersey and shorts have “monumental game wear far exceeding any Jordan” memorabilia it had previously sold — something that’s more common in earlier jerseys, as he swapped out jerseys more often after his return to the NBA.
The jersey is softer than other Jordan jerseys from “repeated cycles of sweaty wear and laundering” and also has some loose threads, which helped with photo matching, according to the auction house. The drawstring of the shorts has been turned pink from the bleed of the red dye.
It was a lower price than the $10.1 million his jersey — without shorts — from the first game of the 1998 NBA Finals went for in 2022, or the $4.6 million that a jersey from his 1996-97 season sold for last winter in a collection of Jordan memorabilia that ultimately went for $8.5 million
Six Air Jordan shoes — one apiece from the last games of the 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 1998 championship series — sold for $8 million at a Sotheby’s auction last year.