A $300,000 Ferrari sold for $2.7 million because Michael Jordan once owned it

A Ferrari that American billionaire Michael Jordan bought in 1997 and sold in 2002 has fetched $2.7 million at auction, roughly ten times what an identical car without his name on the title would bring, and double the top of its estimate.

The 1997 550 Maranello, chassis 108712, sold on Sept. 30 through Joopiter, the auction house founded by Pharrell Williams, which had guided bidders to $700,000 to $1.3 million. Ordinary examples of the model, of which Ferrari built 3,083, trade at $200,000 to $300,000. The gap is Jordan.

He took delivery in late May 1997 from Foreign Cars Italia in North Carolina, in Rosso Barchetta over tan leather with chrome Speedline wheels, and put about 6,400 miles on it commuting to Bulls games and practices under an Illinois plate reading "MJ 5." On June 13, 1997, hours after the Bulls beat the Utah Jazz for his fifth NBA championship, he drove it out of the United Center, a moment caught on camera that has circulated ever since. Tinker Hatfield borrowed the car's lines for the Air Jordan XIV the following year.

Jordan sold it in late 2002 through Lake Forest Sportscars outside Chicago. A California buyer took it, and it vanished from public view for 24 years. John Temerian, founder of the Miami supercar dealer Curated, spent the best part of a decade looking for it, eventually reconstructing an incomplete VIN posted on an internet forum against Ferrari dealer records to find the owner. In May the car went back to Chicago for a pre-sale photoshoot on the grounds of Jordan's mansion.

Jordan does not profit from the sale; the consignor was the California owner, and Joopiter and Curated take the fees. What he supplies is the premium. The result follows a week in which a LeBron James and Kobe Bryant trading card sold for $6.5 million and a Cooper Flagg rookie card for $8 million, and it extends the same logic to steel and leather: provenance now prices above rarity, and a car is a collectible when the right person once held the keys.

The buyer was not disclosed. The sale is a record for a 550 Maranello and, Joopiter says, for the house, which Williams launched in 2022 and has used to sell his own Richard Mille watches, Jacob & Co. jewelry and, now, other people's history. Williams, 53, became a billionaire this year on Forbes' count; the Jordan Ferrari is the biggest single lot he has put under the hammer.

Jordan, 63, has no shortage of memorabilia on the market. His game-worn jerseys and sneakers have set records at Sotheby's and Goldin. The Ferrari is different only in being large enough to drive, and in having been photographed leaving the arena on the night that justified the price.