An unused ticket to Michael Jordan’s NBA debut game with the Chicago Bulls in 1984 was auctioned for nearly $500,000.
Heritage Auctions said the ticket to the Oct. 26, 1984, Chicago Bulls home game against the Washington Bullets sold for $468,000.
Mike Cole, the ticket’s former owner, said he was gifted two tickets to the game by Jerry Sachs, a Bullets executive and family friend, while he was attending Northwestern University in the 1980s. He said one of the tickets remained intact because he had been unable to find anyone to attend the game with him.
Heritage said the ticket is the only known surviving example of an unused ticket from the game, which marked the NBA debut of superstar Michael Jordan.
The sum fetched by the ticket was briefly a new record for the auction of a sports ticket, but it was broken a short time later when a ticket stub from Jackie Robinson’s April 15, 1947, Major League Baseball debut game sold for $480,000.
