Watches and sports memorabilia owned by former NFL quarterback Tom Brady sold for $9 million at a Sotheby’s New York auction Tuesday night on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The total from the sale, tilted “The GOAT Collection: Watches & Treasures from Tom Brady,” surpassed Sotheby’s presale auction estimate of $5.2 million to $8.9 million. All 41 lots sold Tuesday, with a yellow gold Rolex Daytona Paul Newman watch selling for $1.1 million as the most expensive item of the night.
More than 800 people registered to bid on the auction, 34% of whom were first-time participants at Sotheby’s and 40% under age 40. Brady, who maintains TEB Capital Management as his family office, did not attend Tuesday’s sale but promoted the auction with Sotheby’s on social media and met with some potential bidders before the auction.
“The pop culture interest of Tom certainly increases the marketability of the sale,” Brahm Wachter, Sotheby’s head of modern collectibles, told Crain Currency.
A custom-made Audemars Piguet Royal Oak watch, which Brady wore during his Netflix roast in May, sold for $720,000. A University of Michigan jersey worn by Brady during his final college game, the 2000 Orange Bowl, sold for $792,000 as the highest-priced sports memorabilia item of the night. It was one of five jerseys auctioned Tuesday from Brady’s college days at Michigan.
“Nothing of [Brady’s] from college has ever emerged before in the secondary market, so to have so many of his game-worn jerseys from Michigan, where he was still coming into his own and had yet to become the GOAT [greatest of all time],” Wachter said. “It’s a very cool part of his origin story that is exciting to have.”
The auction record for a game-used football jersey is $1.4 million, which Sotheby’s fetched last year for one worn by Brady in his final National Football League game. Other sports memorabilia items auctioned Tuesday were Brady’s cleats from Super Bowl XXXIX for $264,000, his 2000 NFL Combine shirt for $144,000, and a game-worn 2019 New England Patriots helmet for $102,000.
“The high-end sports memorabilia market has really been growing and growing over the last five years since the pandemic,” Wachter said. “We’ve noticed steadily increasing prices over that period of time — really with no signs of slowing even when the economy was in a less good place than it is now — for the very high end, which of course this falls into.”
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