Sotheby’s is auctioning off a set of six of the seven jerseys worn by Lionel Messi during Argentina’s victorious run in the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, including the one he used in the final against France.
The auction house estimates the collective value of these match-worn Adidas jerseys will surpass $10 million. A $5.2 million anonymous bid has already been posted on the auction house’s website.
The collection is on display at the auction house’s New York headquarters now through Dec. 14, the last day to bid for the collection, allowing the public to see the shirts during the bidding process. The winning bid will be announced at 12:01 p.m. ET on Thursday, Dec. 14.
“We have seen enormous interest in match-worn shirts over the last few years,” Brahm Wachter, Sotheby’s head of Modern Collectibles, said in an interview. “The market has existed for a long time, but really, it skyrocketed in the last few years, and we notice that with the rising prices.”
In May 2022, the shirt worn by Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona when he scored the controversial “Hand of God” goal against England in the 1986 World Cup sold for $9.3 million, setting the record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a piece of sports memorabilia. This record was broken four months later by basketball legend Michael Jordan’s jersey worn during his NBA finals run with the Chicago Bulls in 1998. It sold for $10.1 million.
Those sales have fueled a new generation of collectors to Sotheby’s, where more than 50% of bidders and buyers are entirely new to its sales, and half of all bidders are under the age of 40, according to the auction house.
Wachter said photo matching, a technique that involves analyzing high-resolution photographs from games to identify unique characteristics on a piece of memorabilia to authenticate them, is an important factor in rising prices.
“I think that it has brought a lot of collectors interested in, as they can say, ‘This was worn for this exact moment,'” he said.
The jerseys are brought to the auction house by AC Momento, Alexis Ohanian’s company that helps athletes manage sports memorabilia.
The @ACMomento Messi World Cup auction is officially OPEN for bidding at @Sothebys, and somebody already bid $5.2 million.
— John Brennan (@brennanjp) November 30, 2023
14 days to go… 🍿 pic.twitter.com/wEWylsdLov
A portion of the proceeds from the auction will be donated to the UNICAS Project, led by Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children’s Hospital in Spain with the support of the Leo Messi Foundation.
