Joe Montana Super Bowl Jersey Breaks Record At Auction

A jersey that Joe Montana wore for two — two! — Super Bowl victories has been sold at auction for the record-setting sum of $1.212 million.

It was sold through the collectibles marketplace Goldin, which has sold other record-setting items in the past.

If you're wondering how Montana wound up wearing the same jersey in two Super Bowls, four years apart, buckle in for a story that sounds like it came from a bad TV movie.

Allow me to set the stage. It's the morning of Super Bowl XXIII. In just a few hours, Montana and company will crush the dreams of Bengals fans from southern Ohio to Northern Kentucky. What Montana didn't know was that his wife, Jennifer, had packed his jersey from Super Bowl XIX several years earlier. Accompanying it was a note, that read Maybe you want to wear it again."

At least, according to ESPN, this is how went down. If it's true, it would be right at home as a Lifetime original movie creatively titled "The Joe Montana Story."

He went on to wear that jersey and then led the Niners on a game-winning, 92-yard game-winning drive, that became known simply as "The Drive."

Joe Montana during Super Bowl XIX, wearing his jersey in the first of two Super Bowl victories. (Photo by Icon Sportswire)

That Montana Jersey Is A Rarity

Regardless of how it happened, that jersey has to be pretty unique in the eyes of collectors. There can't be too many jerseys that were worn for multiple championships, especially so many years apart.

I'm sure some baseball player at the turn of the century with a name like Orville "Spanky" Schmidt or Mustache McGillicutty probably wore the same jersey for two championships, but that was probably because they didn't replace them every year, what with war rationing being such a big part of the public consciousness in the early years of the 20th century.

However, a jersey with that kind of provenance and worn by a player who is still alive must be hard to come by.

Seeing as it is so rare, this Joe Montana annihilated the sale of the previous most expensive NFL jersey. That was Tom Brady's Super Bowl LV jersey which sold for a paltry $480,000.

That said, it's far from the most valuable jersey ever sold at auction. That distinction belongs to Michael Jordan's "Last Dance" Chicago Bulls jersey which sold last year for over $10 million,

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