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Barack Obama's high school basketball jersey sells for record $192,000 at auction

jack baer
Staff writer
·2 min read

The most expensive high school basketball jersey ever sold at auction doesn’t belong to Michael Jordan. Or LeBron James.

Kobe Bryant? Larry Bird? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? None of the above.

No, the most expensive high school basketball jersey reportedly comes from a man who logged zero NBA minutes in his basketball career: Barack Obama.

The Punahou School jersey of the 44th President of the United States sold for a whopping $192,000 at auction on Friday. According to seller Julien’s Auctions, that sum represents the record for a high school jersey sold at auction.

The sale appears to break a record previously set by LeBron James, whose St. Vincent-St. Mary’s uniform, the one featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, sold for $187,500 last year.

Barack Obama, the basketball player

The former president’s love of basketball has been well-known for years, from shooting hoops on the campaign trail to discussing Jordan in ESPN’s “The Last Dance.”

As a player in high school, Obama didn’t start, but he had his proponents on the court. From NBC News:

Mark Bendix said his old pal should have been a starter at Punahou — and insisted he was not just being loyal to an old friend.

“I loved his game,” he said. “He had a pretty good shot and really handled the ball well.”

Obama’s high school stats appear to be lost to history, but photographs still remain:

Obama’s jersey was one of multiple record-setters at auction on Friday, joined by the jersey from Colin Kaepernick’s NFL debut, (an NFL-record $128,000), and the jersey from Jordan’s Bulls signing ceremony as a rookie (a Jordan-record $320,000).

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