Fans spend millions to own a piece of sports history; the Michael Jordan-Kobe Bryant dual Logoman card sold for $12.932 million in 2025. Babe Ruth’s ‘called shot’ jersey from the 1932 World Series sold for $24.1 million in 2024. In the NFL, Joe Montana’s Super Bowl Jersey set a new record.

The San Francisco 49ers hero’s final Super Bowl jersey has sold for a record $1.515 million at Treasure Trove, ESPN reported. The sale broke the previous record of $1.39 million for Tom Brady’s final NFL game-worn jersey.

Treasure Trove CEO AJ Scaramucci believes the jersey could be worth even more. That is because very few jerseys actually worn by players in championship games still exist.

“When you zoom out and contextualize this jersey, but also a lot of game-worn jerseys by the GOATs, whether it be in football or basketball or whatever the sport is, you think about the trading card markets,” Scaramucci said. “There are huge dislocations from an investment perspective in this market, and snagging this jersey, of which there’s an unbelievably scarce number of these jerseys out there … I would argue that game-worn sports memorabilia of this caliber is dramatically and just freakishly underpriced relative to, say, the trading card market.”

According to ESPN, Montana has three Super Bowl jerseys, despite having played in four. He wore the same jersey for his second and third Super Bowl games. The record-breaking jersey also witnessed a Super Bowl MVP-winning performance from Montana: he threw for an impressive 297 yards, completing 22 of his 29 passes, and scored five touchdowns.

The 49ers defeated the Denver Broncos 55-10, still the largest winning margin in the game’s history. That season, the team was the country’s top-scoring defense. But against Joe Montana and the 49ers, Denver collapsed. This was Joe Cool at his best.

Montana appeared in three playoffs after this game, but never made the Super Bowl.

The jersey was previously sold for $720,000 in 2023. In these past three years, the price has more than doubled. Montana’s jersey from Super Bowls XIX and XXIII (‘The Drive’ game) sold for $1.212 million in 2023. Interestingly, Brady’s final game jersey broke this very record when it sold in 2023.

However, the modern GOAT may be happy to see his record broken by Montana’s jersey. After all, Brady is one of his biggest fans, having idolized Montana growing up in San Francisco.

Even though Tom Brady has retired, Joe Montana is still his idol

Perhaps the one area where Brady has gone past Montana is the number of Super Bowl wins. Montana has four, while Brady has seven. In his own right, Brady deserves to be called the GOAT. But before he became the star he is today, Brady’s hero was Joe Montana.

Growing up in the city, the Patriots icon visited Candlestick often to watch Niners games. Brady wrote on Instagram that he witnessed ‘The Catch’ at Candlestick: Montana threw the game-winning touchdown in the 1981 NFC Championship, sending San Fran to the Super Bowl. Brady was four at that time, and he recalled crying the entire first half because he couldn’t see the game because of the grown-ups.

“When you grow up in the Bay Area and you have that, it gives you a lot of reasons to love sports and love football,” Brady said in 2025 at a Fanatics event. “And that’s when I fell in love with football because of Joe Montana. And he’s still my idol today. He was an incredible quarterback. And he set the tone every single day for what greatness really looks like. … Nobody performed in Super Bowls as great as this guy.”

Brady, in 2016 (by which time he’d won three Super Bowls, and won his fourth that season), maintained that he’d never be Joe Montana’s equal, and the latter is in a “league of his own.” Montana’s Super Bowl jersey resetting the market perhaps proves just that.