Source: Bettmann / Getty
Wilt Chamberlain already owns many of the records listed in the NBA history books. Despite passing away in the 1990s, he just broke another.
Last month, a very rare Wilt Chamberlain rookie card was unearthed after sitting in a closet, and now it’s sold for $1.7 million.
Not only is it the most expensive Chamberlain card to be sold, but it’s also the most expensive basketball card to ever see the light of day.
The seller, along with his brother, picked up the pack of cards back in the 1960s. When he rediscovered them, he contacted Caleb Baker of Crosby to find out what each card was worth.
RECORD SALE
This Wilt Chamberlain rookie card was found in a grocery store closet last month.
Shortly after the card was discovered, it was sent into grading and became the first Wilt rookie EVER to grade a perfect 10.
Last night, the card sold for $1.7 MILLION.
This… pic.twitter.com/FD1M2uhvy7
— The Collectibles Guru (@ericwhiteback) September 5, 2024
Once Baker saw it, he immediately knew it would go for a pretty penny, but he tempered the seller’s expectations because there were no comparable cards.
“I’m just like, ‘I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but this could be life-changing,’ and I’m trying to hold it in for him because I don’t want, you know, to make an empty promise to him, like, ‘Yeah, this is going to be life-changing for you,’” Baker said.
Before the pristine rookie Chamberlain card—which was for his hometown Philadelphia Warriors—the previous highest-selling card was a 1980-81 Topps Larry Bird/Magic Johnson rookie card, which sold for $840,000 in 2021.
That auction went through Goldin, as did Chamberlain’s, but ended up getting snatched a privately brokered deal.
In a statement, Baker explained just how rare the find is, especially in this condition.
“Let’s say you go all the way back to 1961 and you opened a pack right now. The odds of that card in there, being a Wilt Chamberlain in a Gem Mint 10 condition would be one in a million,” he said. “So many of those cards, the quality control in the 60s just wasn’t where it’s at today. So the card condition coming out of the pack are already not great.”
While we may have evidence of a Chamberlain rookie card, we still need footage of that 100-point game from 1962 against the New York Knicks. Just sayin’.
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