A pair of Shohei Ohtani's game-worn, signed New Balance cleats sold for $440,055 on August 16, setting a record for baseball footwear sold at auction. The sale was run by The Realest, and the shoes became the highest-selling item in that company's history.
What sold
The cleats are a one-of-one player exclusive of the New Balance Ohtani 1, his signature shoe, in a white, blue and red colorway. Ohtani wore them on March 18, 2025, in the Dodgers' Tokyo Series opener against the Chicago Cubs at the Tokyo Dome — his first regular-season MLB game played in Japan. He signed the pair afterward in his Japanese kanji signature rather than a romanized autograph.
The auction opened on July 13 and closed on Sunday, August 16, running just over five weeks and drawing 89 bids.
The record it broke
The prior high for baseball cleats was $93,000, paid in 2020 for a pair Michael Jordan wore during his 1994 season with the Double-A Birmingham Barons. Ohtani's pair sold for nearly five times that figure. Bleacher Report described the pair as a one-of-one New Balance Player Exclusive.
Ohtani's memorabilia market has been setting marks across categories. In March, a 1-of-1 Topps Chrome dual MVP Gold Logoman card featuring Ohtani and Aaron Judge sold for $2.16 million on Fanatics Collect, and Ohtani's individual Gold Logoman card sold for $3 million in December.
Why the Tokyo game carries a premium
The March 2025 Tokyo Series was the first time Ohtani played a regular-season major league game in his home country, and MLB staged the two-game set between the Dodgers and Cubs at the Tokyo Dome as the league's season opener. Uristocrat has covered other single-event sports auctions, including Sotheby's sale of OG Anunoby's game-winning ball and the 117 signed sneakers Eminem auctioned for the Marshall Mathers Foundation.
Source: Sole Retriever
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