A replica of the Nov. 28, 1983, “College Basketball Preview” issue of Sports Illustrated, that includes Michael Jordan’s first look on the journal’s cover (alongside North Carolina teammate Sam Perkins), sold for $229,360 at public sale by way of Goldin on Saturday evening. The sale set a public record for a graded journal of any form, beating the earlier record — a replica of Jordan’s Dec. 10, 1984, Sports Illustrated “A Star is Born” cover appearance graded a 9.6 by CGC (on a scale to 10) that sold in 2023 — by simply over $100,000.
What made the journal that bought Saturday so distinctive was not simply that it was Jordan’s first SI cover look, nevertheless it’s the one instance to get a 9.6 grade from PSA to this point. The caveat there, nevertheless, is that PSA, which is finest recognized for grading buying and selling playing cards, simply started grading magazines final summer season (see its grading scale here). CGC, which is finest recognized for grading comedian books, has been grading magazines since 2009 and in addition has one 9.6-graded copy of the identical challenge in its registry.
The 1983 “College Basketball Preview” challenge, which has an authentic value of $1.75 printed on it, is especially powerful to get a excessive grade because it has a fold-out cover and was printed earlier than most collectors knew to avoid wasting something and all the pieces associated to Jordan. The “A Star is Born” challenge has 4 CGC 9.8s and 5 9.6s.
The $229,360 challenge of Sports Illustrated. Photo courtesy of Goldin Auctions.
But earlier than any longtime Sports Illustrated collector runs off to get stacks of magazines graded, a phrase of warning: The overwhelming majority of highest-grade magazines are newsstand copies and never subscription copies. Since the latter had handle stickers glued to the cover, they don’t grade in addition to the cleaner newsstand copies with unblemished covers. Ungraded copies of the ’83 “College Basketball Preview” challenge have lately bought on eBay for between $80 and $355 with newsstand variations commanding the upper costs.
Graded magazines are only a small and nascent area of interest of the sports activities collectibles world that Jordan dominates from buying and selling playing cards to game-worn memorabilia and sneakers. His name remains to be essentially the most searched of any athlete every month on eBay, and he was the one athlete to make {the marketplace}’s top 10 collectibles search terms for 2025. There have been 11 publicly recognized gross sales of $1 million or extra for Jordan playing cards, with the best being his and LeBron James’ autographed 2007 Upper Deck Exquisite twin Logoman card, which bought for a record $12.9 million final yr. His jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals is the second-highest game-worn jersey sale to this point ($10 million, behind Babe Ruth’s 1932 World Series “Called Shot” jersey, which sold for $24.12 million). The Air Jordan 13s he wore within the ’98 Finals maintain the general public sneaker sale record at $2.2 million.
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