These Air Jordan 1s Are the Most Expensive Sneakers Ever
After Michael Jordan’s game-worn and signed pair of Jordan 1s went up for a week-and-a-half-long online auction at Sotheby’s 10 days ago, I made a habit of checking in on the listing. Unlike the exciting multiday battle over the shoes I expected, the bids came in painfully slow dribs and drabs. Early on, the pair surpassed Sotheby’s estimate of $100,000 to $150,000...but bids after that trickled in. When I checked yesterday morning, the auction’s final day, the bid hung at a respectable $260,000. An enormous amount for a pair of sneakers, to be sure, but nowhere near the $437,500 world record amount set in 2019 by an early Nike prototype known as the Moon Shoes. Before the auction, Jordan Geller, the man consigning the Jordans, told me there was “a definite possibility that they'll beat the Moon Shoes,” but that door appeared to be all but deadbolted shut.
But I forgot that hyped grail sneakers aren’t sold languidly over the course of 10 days. They’re sold out in flashes, whether on Nike’s SNKRS app or at a high-end auction house. So what had been a slugfest playing out at quarter speed whipped into an all-out barrage. Over the last 20 minutes alone, bidders involved brought the value of the shoe from $260,000 to $560,000. That $300,000 represents the difference between a fine result and a world-record-setting one. The pair of Jordan 1s are now the most expensive sneaker ever sold at auction—by a margin of $122,500.
The price was no doubt helped along by the airing of The Last Dance, the documentary focused on Jordan and the ’90s Chicago Bulls. And while Sotheby’s savvily aligned the auction with the show’s finale, it wasn’t just timing that made the shoe special. Unlike the high- and low-top models available to collectors, Jordan’s Jordans were mids. These showed signs of heavy wear, unlike later models that Jordan would only wear for a single game. The signature on the heel was done in long-lasting Sharpie rather than ballpoint pen, like most of Jordan’s signatures. And these were the 1s—the iconic original that birthed a generation of sneaker collectors, and that Jordan only wore in the early days of his career.
More than just a great result for a single shoe, Sotheby’s is taking this as a win for a whole collecting category. Brahm Wachter, Sotheby’s’ director of e-commerce development, said in a press release that the sale is proof “that sneaker collecting is truly a global and growing market.” The shoe did everything Sotheby’s hoped it could: 70 percent of the bidders were new to the auction house, and the group skewed young, with hopeful buyers coming in as ripe as 19. After all, a pair of Jordans worth half a million might just be a gateway to watches, cars, and maybe even paintings.
Despite all the wins, Sotheby’s is still getting used to hanging out with the hypebeasts. When the auction house shared the news, it summed up its achievement with an all-caps pronouncement: “SLAM DUNK!”
Originally Appeared on GQ
