In July 2019, the paradigm for the most expensive sneakers ever sold shifted forever. That's when Sotheby's registered its first-ever sale of a pair of sports shoes at auction: vintage Nike “Moon Shoes” from 1972, which hammered for a record-setting $437,000—nearly triple the expected sale price of $150,000. Less than a year later, in May 2020, the auction house moved a pair of autographed Air Jordan 1s for an eye-watering $560,000, making it clear that this was not a one-off fluke.
“Loco prices like these are not just a high-water mark for collectors,” the Sneaker Freaker editor-in-chief Woody writes in The World’s Greatest Sneaker Collections. “They also represent an influx of moneyed investors looking at sneakers as blue-chip investments.” In the sake of these legitimized auction-house trades, private sales of rare sneakers have exploded on the market, reaching some truly dizzying heights. “Today, both prices perversely look like bargains,” Woody writes of those first two sneaker sales, “if you can stomach the idea of old sports shoes worth as much as a house.”
Some of these astronomical rarities are available to purchase right this very minute. On the Sotheby's auction website, for instance, it’s currently possible to bid on a pair of Virgil Abloh-designed Nike Air Force Ones, released in collaboration with Louis Vuitton and limited to only 200 pairs—they’ll just set you back $190,000. (It’s a size 11, which is what I wear, in case anyone wants to get me a present.) If that isn’t fancy enough for you, there’s also this recently listed pair of signed Air Jordan 11s, which were actually worn by MJ during the 1996 NBA Finals; the current bid stands at $380,000, but it seems likely that it could go higher still.
Even those look like rookie numbers compared to some of the real heavy hitters out there. From more rare game-worn grails to insane one-of-one gems, here are the most expensive sneakers ever sold.
1. The Dynasty Collection, $8 million
Earlier this year, Sotheby's registered the most lucrative sneaker sale in the history of the auction house, when the eight-shoe pack known as the “Dynasty Collection” racked up an impressive $8 million sale.
The Dynasty Collection included eight sneakers actually worn by Michael Jordan during the NBA playoffs across eight different seasons. Tim Hallam, the public relations officer for the Chicago Bulls for many years, asked MJ for one of his game-worn shoes after the Finals in 1991—a practice Jordan continued after every playoffs performance thereafter, perhaps out of superstition. These eight shoes represent the other sneaker that Hallam did not receive in these cases.
What’s especially impressive about this sale is that none of the sneakers came in pairs. The lot also included a set of signed photos by Bill Smith of Jordan following each of the Finals, in which he can be seen wearing a shoe on just one foot.
2. “The Last Dance” Air Jordan 13, $2.2 Million
After the runaway success of ESPN’s Jordan documentary The Last Dance in 2020, interest in Air Jordan sneakers worn during MJ's final season with the Chicago Bulls surged. Last year, a buyer completed a sale at Sotheby's for an ultra-rare pair of Jordan 13s that were on His Airness's feet for the iconic final game of the 1998 NBA Finals.
The grand total? A staggering $2.2 million, negotiated in advance and in line with estimates from the auction house. It was a landmark sale for a single pair of sports shoes and a reminder that when it comes to sports memorabilia, it’s hard to beat Michael Jordan. The kicks were in the “Bred” colorway and appeared to be in good condition, especially considering they saw some serious action on the hardwood.
3. Nike Air Yeezy Samples, $1.8 Million
Of course, it’s not just Jordans making noise on the high-end sneaker market, as this monumental sale proved. In the spring of 2021, Sotheby's registered a sale at auction of a one-of-a-kind pair of Nike Air Yeezy prototypes, which Kanye West debuted onstage at the Grammys in 2008. The sneakers were the first-ever pair sold for more than a million dollars.
The Yeezys were purchased by the investing platform RARES. The company’s CEO and founder, Gerome Sapp, told the press that the shoes were acquired “in order to increase accessibility and empower the communities that birthed sneaker culture with the tools to gain financial freedom,” adding that buying them was like securing “a piece of history.”
4. Nike Air Ship, $1.4 Million
When this pair of Nike Air Ships sold for nearly $1.5 million at auction via Sotheby’s in late 2021, they briefly became the most expensive sports shoes of all time and remain one of the most expensive pieces of sports memorabilia ever sold. Worn by Michael Jordan during his fifth-ever NBA game in November 1984, they are a definitive part of sneaker history.
Serious sneaker fans know the Air Ship as the first model Jordan sported in the league, while the design for the Air Jordan was still being finalized by Nike. This particular pair of Air Ships would have been one of the first and only shoes Michael ever wore on the court that weren’t part of his signature shoe line, making them in some ways even more special.
5. “Flu Game” Air Jordan 12, $1.3 Million
Following Game 5 of the 1998 NBA Finals, a Utah Jazz ball boy by the name of Preston Truman was given a once-in-a-lifetime gift: the sneakers Michael Jordan wore during the game. In 2020, in the wake of the release of The Last Dance and the uptick in collectors’ interest in Air Jordans, Truman sold the shoes to Grey Flannel Auctions for a little over $200,000. Just three years later, in early 2023, they sold again at auction for an incredible $1.38 million.
It helped that the shoes were worn during the legendary Flu Game, in which Jordan overcame a debilitating bout of food poisoning to deliver one of his most clutch performances ever. To this day, the black-and-red Air Jordan 12s are known as the “Flu Game,” which means that these sneakers are the OG version of one of the most beloved Jordan colorways of all time, too. Few game-worn sneakers have as much illustrious history attached to them.
The story does have a down side: Truman launched a lawsuit against Grey Flannel in 2023, claiming that they pressured him into selling the shoes. The lawsuit is still ongoing.
6. “Glass Shard” Air Jordan 1, $615,000
In August 2020, as post-Last Dance Jordan hype was reaching record levels, a single pair of game-worn Air Jordan 1s turned heads when it sold at auction via Christie’s for more than half a million dollars. Worn by Michael Jordan during an exhibition game in Italy, according to the auction listing, they were actually estimated to fetch an even higher figure, closer to $850,000. (Still, the price was impressive.)
What made this particular pair of Jordan 1s so unique was what else was included with them: a shard of broken glass, embedded directly into the shoe and apparently caused by Jordan shattering the backboard during a slam dunk. (These, of course, are not to be confused with the “Shattered Backboard” Jordan 1s.) During the same auction, a pair of sneakers worn by Jordan during Team USA’s gold medal game at the 1992 Olympics fetched over $100,000.
7. Game-Worn Air Jordan 1, $560,000
Mere months before the previous entry, another pair of Air Jordan 1s hit the auction block and shattered the previous record for the sale of shoes, which was set in 2019 (see below). Signed by Michael Jordan, the shoes were worn during a game in his rookie season. Like MJ's vertical, the bids for the sneakers were downright explosive in the final hours of the 10-day auction, rocketing up by $300,000 to close at an incredible $560,000.
8. Nike “Moon Shoe,” $437,500
In 1972, when Nike was still just a fledgling upstart, the company's co-founder and running guru Bill Bowerman cobbled together one of the Swoosh's first-ever performance shoes. Dubbed the “Moon Shoes”—because their waffle-tread soles left astronaut-like footprints in the dirt—only about a dozen pairs of these crude prototypes were made and handed out that year to competitors at the US Track & Field Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon. They eventually served as the inspiration for Nike's legendary Waffle Trainer, which launched in 1974.
Forty-five years later, the sneakers made history all over again by becoming the first collectible sport shoes to be sold at auction by Christie's. The 2019 sale helped establish the precedent for the market, which continues to expand and grow even now. At the time, no one expected sneaker auctions to be quite so coveted: initial estimates placed the Moon Shoes at a conservative $160,000, but the pair hammered for nearly triple that. Canadian business Miles Nadal, who scooped up these mammoth grails in the auction, called them “a true historical artifact in sports history and pop culture.”
9. “Broken Foot” Air Jordan 1, $422,130
The “Broken Foot” Air Jordan 1s are yet another historic pair of game-worn Js that absolutely smashed the initial estimate. They sold for a jaw-dropping $422,130, almost double the starting bid of $250,000 in an auction at Leland's in January 2022.
The shoes take their name from an infamous game between the Bulls and Golden State Warriors on October 29, 1985, during which Michael Jordan fractured a bone in his left foot. The injury would become career-defining for Jordan, derailing his second season and igniting the fire that drove him toward his first championship, as detailed in the ESPN documentary The Last Dance. Leland’s said it acquired the shoes from “a cosigner whose father was gifted the game-worn sneakers personally from Jordan at the time,” according to a report in Complex. The sneakers come in Jordan’s own slightly mismatched sizing: size 13 on the left, size 13 and a half on the right.
10. Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force One, $352,800
In February 2022, just months after the tragic passing of Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton auctioned off 200 pairs of the late visionary's most coveted sneaker designs: a Nike Air Force One entirely covered in LV's iconic monogram and Damier check. The auction at Sotheby's was organized in support of Abloh's acclaimed scholarship fund “Post-Modern,” which was founded to “support the education of academically promising students of Black, African American, or African descent.”
Most of the pairs sold in the low six figures. This particular pair, a US size 5, sold for nearly 25 times the original auction estimate and for twice the price of the second-most expensive pair sold, a US size 5.5 that went for $176,400. Demand for Abloh’s work only continues to skyrocket, and it seems likely that other rarities bearing his signature will sell for increasingly high figures as time goes on.
11. Nike Air Mag, $200,000
“Power laces! Alright!” There’s perhaps no more famous sneaker scene in movie history than Marty McFly slipping on his futuristic, auto-lacing Nike Air Mag kicks in 1989’s Back to the Future: Part II. After decades of lobbying from fans, Nike finally released the fictional sneakers to the public via two highly limited drops: first in 2011, without the power laces; and then again in 2016 with them. All of the proceeds from both launches went to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which supports the search for a cure for Parkinson's disease. The 88 pairs of the 2016 version alone raised more than $6 million for the charity, including a single pair auction off at a gala for a whopping $200,000.
12. “MJ’s Secret Stuff” Air Jordan 11, $176,000
For sneakerheads of a certain age, there's no more covetable shoe than the Air Jordan 11 “Space Jam,” named for its appearance in the movie and worn by MJ during his post-baseball return to the NBA playoffs in 1995. And the rarest, most alluring version of the “Space Jam” is this deadstock sample created for the film and signed by Jordan himself. Dubbed the “MJ’s Secret Stuff” Jordan 11s, they sold at auction in 2021 for an impressive $176,000.