Shohei Ohtani has overtaken Michael Jordan in a corner of the sports memorabilia market few probably expected.
A pair of Ohtani’s game-used and personally signed New Balance shoes from the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2025 season opener in Tokyo sold for $440,055, according to an August 17 release from memorabilia marketplace The Realest. The company says the sale established an all-time public auction record for baseball footwear.
The previous benchmark belonged to Jordan. His game-worn and signed Birmingham Barons cleats from his 1994 baseball season sold through Heritage Auctions for $93,000 in May 2020. Heritage’s auction archive confirms that price.
That means the Ohtani shoes went for roughly 4.73 times as much as Jordan’s cleats, a difference of more than $347,000.
And the game attached to Ohtani’s pair helps explain why collectors pushed the bidding so high.
HeavyShohei Ohtani’s game-used and personally signed shoes from the Dodgers’ 2025 Tokyo Series opener sold for $440,055 at auction.
Shohei Ohtani Shoes Came From Historic Dodgers Homecoming
Ohtani wore the shoes on March 18, 2025, when the Dodgers opened their season against the Chicago Cubs at Tokyo Dome.
It was Ohtani’s first regular-season MLB game in his home country, and the moment became considerably more than a normal Opening Day.
MLB reported that the Dodgers’ 4-1 victory averaged more than 25 million viewers in Japan, making it the most-watched MLB game ever in the country. The two-game series averaged more than 24 million viewers and became MLB’s most-watched series ever in Japan.
Ohtani gave that enormous audience plenty to remember.
He went 2-for-5 with a double and scored twice in the opener. His first hit of the season was a 107.4 mph line drive in the fifth inning that helped ignite the Dodgers’ go-ahead rally.
The shoes also carry unusually specific provenance.
According to The Realest, Ohtani signed them with his Japanese kanji signature and added an inscription identifying them as game-used for Opening Day of the Tokyo Series. The auction listing says the shoes are supported by MLB’s Authentication Program and Fanatics Authentic and still contain visible evidence of their game use, including Tokyo Dome dirt.
Those details turn the item from a pair of signed Ohtani shoes into a physical piece of one of the biggest international events MLB has staged.
Ohtani Sale Puts His Memorabilia in Rare Company
The $440,055 result also demonstrates how differently the collectibles market is beginning to treat Ohtani.
The Realest said the auction drew 89 bids and became the highest-selling item in the company’s history. The marketplace also said the price topped previously auctioned baseball footwear associated with players including Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron and Derek Jeter.
Jordan’s old baseball benchmark provides an especially useful comparison because his 1994 Barons cleats came with their own extraordinary crossover appeal. Jordan left the NBA to pursue professional baseball and played 127 games for the Double-A Barons that season.
Yet the $93,000 paid for those signed cleats in 2020 now looks modest beside what a collector paid for Ohtani’s Tokyo pair.
Ohtani already operates in a different stratosphere in the memorabilia business. His 50th home run ball from his historic 50-homer, 50-steal 2024 season sold for $4.392 million, a record price for a baseball.
The Tokyo shoes offer another illustration of the same phenomenon: collectors are not simply valuing Ohtani as one of baseball’s best players. They are attaching enormous premiums to artifacts connected to the defining moments of his career.
And few Ohtani moments carried more symbolism than walking onto the Tokyo Dome field in Dodger blue for a regular-season game in Japan.
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