Michael Jordan’s Jersey Sold for $12.26 Million. The Guy Who Owned It Just Bought a Jai Alai League

Michael Jordan’s Game 3 jersey from the 1998 NBA Finals sold for $12.26 million on Tuesday night, closing a JOOPITER auction that ran exclusively online. It shattered the previous NBA record of $10.1 million, set in 2022 by another Jordan jersey from that same six-game Finals series against the Utah Jazz. The seller, Rob Gough, had held onto it since 2023.

The Sale

Bidding closed at 8:00 p.m. EDT on September 29, 2026, and JOOPITER called the result a new global benchmark for sports memorabilia, a monumental shift for the entire collectibles sector. The $12.26 million figure includes the buyer’s premium. The white Chicago Bulls jersey was worn during Jordan’s final championship campaign with the Bulls, the run immortalized in the documentary “The Last Dance,” and carries the 1998 Finals championship patch, widely regarded by collectors as the most significant patch in modern basketball history. It’s the only publicly known white jersey from that Finals ever to surface on the market. JOOPITER itself is a digital-first auction platform founded by musician and producer Pharrell Williams.

The jersey stands out for an almost accidental reason: it’s white, from a road-heavy Finals run where black alternates got most of the airtime, and nobody has ever seen another one like it change hands publicly.

Gough bought it in 2023 and won’t say the price, only that it was “a lot” and probably a jersey record at the time.

The Seller

Gough started collecting seriously in 2020, when COVID-19 hit. Six months later he became a name in the hobby by paying $5.2 million for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card, the most expensive sports card transaction known at the time.

“Everyone thought I was out of my mind, because it was so high compared to the previous transactions,” Gough said.

The jersey deal wasn’t Gough’s first eight-figure memorabilia sale, either. He quietly sold that same Mantle card in early 2023 through a broker for $12.375 million, a deal he’d never disclosed until now. He doesn’t know what the eventual buyer paid on top of that, but it’s likely the most expensive known card sale on record, ahead of even the previous mark he set himself. The current publicly known ceiling for a card is $12.9 million, paid for a Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant Dual Logoman from the 2007-08 UD Exquisite set.

Speaking in a video interview just ahead of the auction’s close, Gough was reflective about the jersey. “I’ve always felt like when I own these things, I’m a steward of a piece of history,” he said.

Where It Ranks

Jordan’s jersey is now the second-most expensive sports team jersey ever sold, behind Babe Ruth’s “called shot” jersey from the 1932 World Series, which fetched $24.1 million in 2024. It’s a small, strange club: jerseys, cards, and the handful of collectors willing to pay eight figures to own them.

Gough is one of the few people who has now set records in both categories, on a card and on a jersey, years apart, without most of the hobby knowing about the card deal until he said so on camera.

What Comes Next

Gough isn’t sitting on the money. In August, he bought the World Jai Alai League, a Miami-based operation that relaunched in 2022. Jai alai once drew crowds of 15,000, before a three-year player strike in the late 1980s drove fans away and never fully got them back.

“I’m going to flip things on its head,” Gough said, laying out plans to rebuild the league’s broadcasting, ticket sales, and player storytelling from scratch.

JOOPITER’s curated sports auction block isn’t done with Jordan yet. The site’s next closing item is his personal 1997 Ferrari 550 Maranello, which he drove during his final years playing for the Bulls in Chicago, with bidding set to close September 30.

As for the jersey, Gough says he’ll mark the moment quietly. “I’ll be at home enjoying a quiet evening with the family and taking it all in,” he said. “It’s been a privilege to own this piece of Jordan’s history.”