Lakers: Kobe Bryant’s Final All-Star Game Jersey Sells for Over $100K

Kobe Bryant’s game-worn jersey from his final All-Star Game sold for over $100,000 on NBA Auctions

The love that Los Angeles Lakers fans feel for Kobe Bryant is near unparalleled by any other fan-base with a single player. Obviously a lot of that is a construct of Kobe having spent each of his 20 seasons in the NBA as a member of the Lakers, but being a once-in-a-generation type of talent certainly doesn’t hurt either.

However, one of the interesting things that brings about as Kobe Bryant plays his last season in the NBA and with the Lakers is that this rabid fan-base wants to take away a memory from Kobe’s farewell tour. Whether that means paying an obscene amount of money for tickets to a game or an even more ludicrous sum for memorabilia, fans just want something to remember this last hoorah by.

Apparently someone really wanted to remember Kobe Bryant’s last NBA All-Star Game. As the official NBA Auctions site put all of the game-worn jerseys up for auction over the past month, the price of Bryant’s kept climbing and climbing until the auction finally closed with the jersey selling for $100,040:

To put into perspective just how absurd of a price that is, the next highest price on one of the game-worn All-Star Game jerseys was for Stephen Curry‘s, which sold for $45,000. The next highest after that was LeBron James‘ at just over $28,000.

Though it unquestionably is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a piece of sports memorabilia—even if it is Kobe Bryant—it actually might not be that bad of an investment. Once Bryant has officially been retired and is eventually inducted into the Hall of Fame, the chance of that jersey’s value appreciating to more than what the buyer paid for it are at least plausible.

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Sure, paying $100,000 for anything that’s just going to be framed and hang on a wall might seem a bit crazy. However, it’s also a testament to just how much Kobe Bryant means to fans of basketball and Lakers fans.