As sellers of vintage clothing, Tennessee couple Sean and Nikki McEvoy are always on the lookout for cheap clothes, preferably stuff that's not been worn since the Carter administration. In 2014, they decided to swing by a North Carolina Goodwill store. There, Nikki spotted a "neat, high quality" college sweater from West Point Military Academy. And it was cheap! The duo only had to pay 58 cents for it. But maybe the people at Goodwill should've looked at that sweater more closely. They might have noticed that it used to belong to NFL coaching superstar Vince "The Bard" Lombardi.
U.S. Military Academy"I should probably sew my name into this so it doesn't accidentally get donated to Goodwill."
Once back home, Nikki took a peek and found a name tag which read "LOMBARDI 46" sewed into the neckline. Unfortunately, that name didn't ring a bell to her, so the sweater went into the pile of vintage clothes. It was only by sheer coincidence that a few months later, Sean was watching a documentary about Lombardi and saw the man wearing a familiar-looking sweater in an old picture. "Wouldn't it be cool if we had that exact sweater?" he wondered...
Yep, this 58-cent Goodwill buy was what Lombardi had worn while at West Point, where many agree he learned his famed style of coaching (read: yelling). With such a sporting relic in hand, Sean called the Football Hall of Fame to ask if they wanted to buy it, but they demanded that they donate it for free (because football is always about choosing morals over money). So he drove the sweater to a Dallas auction house, where, after they confirmed it was indeed oozing with the pit stains of history, they auctioned it off to a mega-fan for $43,020. That's a profit of over 10 percent! Maybe way over. We're terrible with numbers.
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