A copy of the Nov. 28, 1983, “College Basketball Preview” issue of Sports Illustrated, featuring Michael Jordan’s first appearance on the magazine’s cover (alongside North Carolina teammate Sam Perkins), sold for $229,360 at auction through Goldin on Saturday night. The sale set a public record for a graded magazine of any kind, beating the previous record — a copy 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 just over $100,000.
What made the magazine that sold Saturday so exceptional was not just that it was Jordan’s first SI cover appearance, but it’s the only example to get a 9.6 grade from PSA to date. The caveat there, however, is that PSA, which is best known for grading trading cards, just began grading magazines last summer (see its grading scale here). CGC, which is best known for grading comic books, has been grading magazines since 2009 and also has one 9.6-graded copy of the same issue in its registry.
The 1983 “College Basketball Preview” issue, which has an original price of $1.75 printed on it, is particularly tough to get a high grade since it has a fold-out cover and was printed before most collectors knew to save anything and everything related to Jordan. The “A Star is Born” issue has four CGC 9.8s and five 9.6s.
The $229,360 issue of Sports Illustrated. Photo courtesy of Goldin Auctions.
But before any longtime Sports Illustrated collector runs off to get stacks of magazines graded, a word of warning: The vast majority of highest-grade magazines are newsstand copies and not subscription copies. Since the latter had address stickers glued to the cover, they don’t grade as well as the cleaner newsstand copies with unblemished covers. Ungraded copies of the ’83 “College Basketball Preview” issue have recently sold on eBay for between $80 and $355 with newsstand versions commanding the higher prices.
Graded magazines are just a small and nascent niche of the sports collectibles world that Jordan dominates from trading cards to game-worn memorabilia and sneakers. His name is still the most searched of any athlete each month on eBay, and he was the only athlete to make the marketplace’s top 10 collectibles search terms for 2025. There have been 11 publicly known sales of $1 million or more for Jordan cards, with the highest being his and LeBron James’ autographed 2007 Upper Deck Exquisite dual Logoman card, which sold for a record $12.9 million last year. His jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals is the second-highest game-worn jersey sale to date ($10 million, behind Babe Ruth’s 1932 World Series “Called Shot” jersey, which sold for $24.12 million). The Air Jordan 13s he wore in the ’98 Finals hold the public sneaker sale record at $2.2 million.
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence in all our coverage. When you click or make purchases through our links, we may earn a commission.