At a Goodwill store in Asheville, North Carolina, in June 2014, Sean and Rikki McEvoy saw a sweater that caught their attention. They didn’t know what they had just discovered, but they bought it for 58 cents. The name “Lombardi” was stitched on a cotton swatch inside the gray wool sweater, which had the words “West Point” printed on the front. It turns out that one of the greatest football coaches of all time, Vince Lombardi, owned and wore it.
On February 21, 2015, Heritage Auctions sold the famous Lombardi sweater for $43,020 in New York City. The buyer requested anonymity. The sweater belonged to Lombardi during his tenure as coach from 1949 to 1953. Ann Wannamaker, the widow of Bill Wannamaker, who coached under Lombardi at Army, gave it to Goodwill.
When Sean and Rikki McEvoy bought the sweater, they didn’t know its worth and first believed it to be a basketball warm-up. Sean didn’t understand the sweater’s importance until he watched a documentary about Lombardi. After that, he got in touch with the Pro Football Hall of Fame before discovering Dallas’s Heritage Auctions.
Mears, a uniform authentication business, verified the sweater, and following widespread media coverage, internet bidding raised the price to $20,000. With a buyer’s premium of 19.5%, the ultimate price was $43,020 after the winning offer of $36,000 was placed over the phone.
Since Heritage Auctions is giving Goodwill about $4,000 of the proceeds it receives from the vendor, Goodwill won’t lose this battle. Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions off for Heritage, said that this story offers the delights of possessing a relic of genuine historical significance as well as the surprise discovery of something thought to have been lost. Vince Lombardi Jr. said he hopes whoever owns the sweater will cherish it.
The fact that the sweater is now part of a collection is more significant to Sean and Rikki McEvoy than the fact that they made more than 50,000 times their investment. “If I don’t buy, there’s a chance that it sits there and the next stop is it getting ground up into a rag,” Sean stated.
