Kobe Bryant's Staples Center locker fetches record $2.9 million at auction

LOS ANGELES -- The home locker that the late Kobe Bryant used from 2003-04 to his final season in 2015-16 has sold for a record-setting $2.9 million, the auction house that brokered the sale said Friday.

According to Sotheby's, it's the most valuable sports locker to ever sell at auction. It's also the third-most expensive piece of Bryant memorabilia of all time, trailing just a game-used, autographed and photo-matched jersey from Bryant's rookie season, which sold for $3.69 million in 2021, and a signed, game-used and photo-matched Bryant jersey from his lone MVP season in 2007-08, which sold for $5.6 million -- the second-most valuable basketball jersey ever sold.

The locker was bidding at $750,000, but over the final twenty minutes of the auction, four bidders pushed the sale to just under $3 million.

"Kobe Bryant's locker is not merely a piece of memorabilia," Brahm Wachter, Sotheby's head of modern collectibles, said in a statement. "But a profound relic from one of basketball's most iconic figures. Today's price highlights not only Kobe's enduring legacy but also the exceptional nature of this unique item."

During the Staples Center's 2018 renovations, an unnamed maintenance worker saved Bryant's locker from demolition, sold it to a private collector, who reunited the locker with Bryant's nameplate.

Sotheby's notes that a portion of the sale's proceeds will "directly benefit" the Los Angeles Lakers Youth Foundation but did not elaborate as to how much.