Basketball legend Micheal Jordan’s sneakers that he wore for a game in 1985 sold for a whopping $560,000, breaking the world auction record for sneakers. This was more than three times the expected price for the pair of shoes.
The earlier record for the most expensive pair of sneakers was set last year when the Nike “Moon Shoe” sold for $437,500. These were one of the only 12 pairs made for the 1972 Olympic Trials and were designed by the co-founder of Nike, Bill Bowerman.
The Nike Air Jordan 1 sneakers were autographed by the legend himself. Like most other shoes of Jordan, this is also a mismatched pair, where the left one is a size 13 whereas the right is a size 13.5.
The Nike Air Jordan 1s were tailor-made for Jordan and had red laces rather than the conventional black and white ones.
Ten bidders from over six countries and four continents competed for these shoes.
“Following a bidding war which drove the value up by US $300,000 within the final twenty minutes of the sale, the pair achieved more than 3.5x their $150,000 high estimate,” Sotheby’s, the auction house, said.
“Produced between February to April 1985, Jordan wore the present pair of Air Jordan 1s during an early, pivotal point of his career and thus catapulted the sneaker’s popularity,” it added.
This auction coincided with the 35th anniversary of the Air Jordan brand and with the screening of the documentary ‘The Last Dance,’ an ESPN 10-part docuseries about Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
Sotheby’s said the shoe sale “shows not only the incredible appeal of Michael Jordan as one of the most recognizable and legendary athletes of all time, but also that sneaker collecting is truly a global and growing market.”
