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It’s the kind of Goodwill score thrifters dream about.
Back in January, Portland teenager Quinn Brown found a Wilt Chamberlain Los Angeles Lakers warm-up jacket in the Goodwill Bins. It cost $3.07. Brown suspected it was the real deal, though, based on its worn appearance and some online photo-sleuthing. The stitch patterns seemed to match the jacket the NBA star wore during the 1972 Finals.
He was right.
The gold-and-purple short-sleeved jacket was professionally authenticated and it’s going up for auction at Sotheby’s New York starting July 1. It’s estimated it will fetch $150,000 to $250,000, according to the auction house, which calls the jacket “rare and significant.”
“This jacket is an extraordinary piece of memorabilia from Chamberlain’s final chapter in the NBA,” Sotheby’s writes in its promotional materials for the “Summer Sports Marquee” auction.
A similar Chamberlain warm-up jacket, worn during the 1968–69 season, sold in 2022 for $56,400 at Heritage Auctions. A representative from that auction house says the market has sweetened since then, as Wilt Chamberlain gear has proven to be some of the most coveted NBA memorabilia. In 2023, Chamberlain’s 1972 Finals jersey sold for $4.9 million at Sotheby’s. That’s the third-most expensive NBA jersey ever sold at auction, behind only Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan jerseys. Though he played a few years before those superstars, Chamberlain is known as one of the 10 greatest basketball players of all time, and still holds the single-game scoring record of 100 points, set in 1962.
Brown, a 19-year-old Lincoln High School graduate, found the jacket at one of the three metro-area Goodwill Outlet locations. He would not reveal which. “I don’t want a ton of people to start coming there,” he says.
It’s a mystery how the jacket made its way to the Portland-area Goodwill Outlets. Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette operates Goodwill Outlets, as they are officially known, in Northeast Portland, Hillsboro, Milwaukie and Vancouver, Wash. They’re called the “Bins” after the large, rolling blue bins that shoppers can pick through; most clothes are sold by the pound.
Each location has communities of “pickers” like Brown who have an eye for valuable merchandise and know how to work the resale market. Shopping at the bins is like a grody, competitive treasure hunt—an experience that separates the real-deal pickers from the ones who are more into curated vintage boutiques.
Brown learned the trade from his older sister and has been reselling his finds for about three years, mostly on Depop and a little on eBay.
It was a normal weekday morning Jan. 15 at the Bins until the staff did one of their regular merchandise rotations at 10 am.
“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 says. “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 because I could tell it was good.”
The warmup jacket is short-sleeved, collared and Lakers yellow, with a team logo on the chest and “Chamberlain” stitched across the back in purple.
From there, the research began. There are no tags, size or anything like that, which makes sense given the time period and that it was custom made. Brown started comparing photos of the jersey with photos of Chamberlain at games online, analyzing stitching and patches. The jacket’s Scovill buttons, which were popular on uniforms until they were discontinued in 1984, were another sign of authenticity.
Pretty quickly, Brown learned from others in the resale industry that the next step was to get the jacket authenticated. Within a week, multiple auction houses were interested. Brown chose Sotheby’s, which handled the authentication process.
The authenticator, SIA Photo Match, matched the jacket in February to photos taken of Chamberlain during three Lakers games, including one game during the 1972 NBA Finals, a series in which the Lakers defeated the New York Knicks. Brown woke up to a message from Sotheby’s about the 1972 Finals photo match and immediately knew the value had just skyrocketed.
“That was the most exciting moment I’ve had in my life.”
Before finding the Chamberlain jersey, Brown’s biggest Goodwill score was a vintage Sub Pop T-shirt that said “LOSER” on the front. It sold for $250 on Depop. Since graduating from Lincoln, he has stayed in town to focus on his thrifting business. “I’ve just been getting better and better at it.”
Brown intends to invest his earnings from the auction in either an index fund or real estate. First, he’ll use some of the money on a trip to Vietnam with friends a few weeks after the auction closes July 20.
“This is a crazy experience,” Brown said shortly after the big find. “A couple of days ago I had found nothing crazy, then this. It’s amazing.”
