Teen snags Wilt Chamberlain’s L.A. Lakers jacket at Goodwill for $4. He could make $335K

When Quinn Brown, 19, first laid eyes on basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain’s 1972 Los Angeles Lakers warmup jacket, it was in somebody else’s hands.

The Portland, Ore., teen was picking through bins of new arrivals at a local Goodwill store in January when he saw another shopper pick up a massive, bright yellow jacket with Chamberlain’s name etched on the back. The shopper eyed it indecisively, then tossed it back.

Brown snatched it up. As an avid thrifter, he says he knew right away it was a good find. He bought it for $3.07 US ($4.36 Cdn), figuring he could sell it online for a couple hundred bucks. 

Now it’s on the auction block at Sotheby’s, where it’s expected to fetch as much as $250,000 US ($355,150 Cdn). 

“I could tell it was good, but I would have never assumed that it would have actually been [Chamberlain’s] jacket,” Brown told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. “It was kind of just something you find.”

The art of picking bins 

Brown, a recent high-school graduate, has made something of a career out of picking through Goodwill bins, a skill he learned from his twin sister. 

He buys used clothes by the pound, scouring bins for interesting or rare items, which he sells online for a profit. 

“I kind of just have an eye for what I think other people want to wear,” he said. 

Before now, his biggest find was a vintage T-shirt from Sub Pop, a Seattle record label that made a name for itself in the ’90s by signing Nirvana and Soundgarden. He bought it for a dollar and sold it for $250 US. 

When he examined the Chamberlain jacket, he said he knew it was vintage. It featured Scovill buttons, which were discontinued in 1984.

But it wasn’t until he started looking up photos online that he began to suspect it might actually have been worn by Chamberlain himself.

Another clue it was the real deal? The size matched other Chamberlain jackets and jerseys from previous auctions. 

“The jacket was ridiculously big,” Brown said. “Like, it would not have fit me.”

1972 championship history 

Brown posted his find on Instagram to get some feedback. Soon, he had auction houses sliding into his DMs. 

He ultimately struck a deal with Sotheby’s, which hired third-party company SIA Photo Match to authenticate the item.

The company matched details of the jacket’s stitching to three authentic photos of Chamberlain — two taken during the 1972-73 NBA season, and one taken during the 1972 NBA Finals.

In 1972, the Lakers beat the New York Knicks in five games to win the championship, their first since moving from Minneapolis to Los Angeles.

The victory was in no small part thanks to Chamberlain, who was named MVP. It was his second and final NBA Championship, and he later revealed he’d played Game 5 with a broken wrist.

“This jacket is a piece of sports history,” Sotheby’s said on its bidding page. 

Sotheby’s has valued the jacket between $150,000 and 250,000 US, and it’s on the auction block until July 29. Bidding was up to $15,000 US as of Monday afternoon. 

Another Chamberlain warm-up jacket, worn during the 1968-69 season, sold in 2022 for $56,400 US at Heritage Auctions. In 2023, his 1972 Finals jersey sold for $4.9 million US at Sotheby’s.

Whatever this  jacket sells for, Sotheby’s will take a cut off the top, though Brown declined to reveal how much. 

Sotheby’s did not respond to a request for comment.

Brown says he considered holding onto the jacket a bit longer, as he suspects it will only increase in value.

“But I also know that right now I can use the money and play it safe and just invest the money,  probably into an index fund,” he said. “I really hope it goes to a true fan who will be able to appreciate the history of the jacket.”

He says he still thinks about his fellow thrifter who had the jacket in his hands, but let it go. He knows what it feels like to leave something valuable in the bins. 

“I feel really guilty about it,” he said. “But it’s just how it works.”