A Portland teen grabbed a jacket a stranger had just thrown back into a Goodwill bin, and it’s now expected to sell for up to $250,000

Quinn Brown, a nineteen-year-old from Portland, Oregon, picked up a warm-up jacket that another shopper had tossed back into a bin at the Hillsboro Goodwill Outlet in January. He paid three dollars and seven cents for it. That single purchase has since been authenticated as a piece of NBA history tied to Wilt Chamberlain, and it is now expected to fetch as much as $250,000 at auction.

As detailed by BroBible, Brown suspected the jacket might be authentic but could not confirm it right away. He compared the stitching on his find to photos of Chamberlain from the early 1970s and began to suspect he was holding something significant.

Experts have since confirmed the jacket was worn by Chamberlain during the 1972-73 NBA season, a stretch that included the 1972 NBA Finals. The garment was photomatched to three separate images, including one taken during a home game against the New York Knicks in that Finals series.

This thrift store detour turned into a six-figure discovery

Sotheby’s New York is handling the sale, where the jacket carries a presale estimate of $150,000 to $250,000. The lot has already drawn a current bid of $20,000 across thirty-five bids, and it is listed with no reserve.

The discovery lands during a week full of unusual viral finds circulating online, including a story about an AI-powered robot wedding making the rounds on social media. Provenance records for the jacket list it simply as discovered at Goodwill and now held by an American private collector.

Sotheby’s description called the jacket especially significant because of how many images it was matched to across a single season. The auction house added that photomatching a piece of game-worn clothing to a specific Finals series is exceptional for a player from that era.

The auction house also pointed to the timing of Chamberlain’s career, noting the jacket comes from his final NBA season before retirement. Once he stepped away from the league after the 1972-73 season, the pool of items connected to his playing days became permanently fixed.

Everyday discoveries like Brown’s continue to draw attention online, echoing a separate report about a routine egg carton find that similarly caught social media’s interest this week. The Sotheby’s auction for the Chamberlain jacket is scheduled to close on July 21 at 03:44 AM PKT.

As of now, the jacket remains listed as Lot 14 in Sotheby’s Summer Sports Classic auction, with bidding still open ahead of the close.