Sale report · graded 20 July 2026
Sotheby's. 173 lots, every close captured. This is the sale the whole record is built on — the only graded set big enough, and with published estimates, to score anything properly against.
Lots tracked
173
Every close captured, including two withdrawn on the day
Calls graded
60
The lots where Sotheby's published an estimate to score against
Beat the house
70%
Closer to the final price than the estimate was
Typical error
44%
House ran 73% on the same lots
And the number that matters more than the hit rate: 49 of those 60 calls were too high. Median overshoot, 42%. I didn't find that by winning — I found it by running a no-skill baseline against myself. The working is here.
This is the sale that produced it, and it's the closest thing I've got to a law.
Every six-figure vintage or star jersey in the catalogue closed below its low estimate. Four for four, no exceptions. Grade it in hammer terms — the 28% premium hides this if you read the all-in figure.
| Lot | Hammer | Low estimate | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lew Alcindor 1971 Finals — signed, matched to 3 games, championship clincher | $380,000 | $400,000 | 0.95× |
| Wilt Chamberlain 1967-68 Eastern Semifinal | $220,000 | $300,000 | 0.73× |
| LeBron James 2014-15 Cavaliers — signed | $65,000 | $120,000 | 0.54× |
| Wilt Chamberlain 1968 All-Star — signed | ~$64,930 | $200,000 | 0.32× |
Now the two that went the other way. Neither was a name. Both were contested moments.
| Lot | Hammer | Low estimate | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super Bowl XLII championship-clinching touchdown ball | $320,000 | $100,000 | 3.20× |
| LeBron James 2013 Miami Eastern Conference Finals — signed | $170,000 | $80,000 | 2.12× |
An Alcindor jersey from a title-clinching Finals game, signed and photo-matched, couldn't reach its low estimate. A football tripled its. The famous name isn't the thing. The moment is.
I tag every call. Conviction means there's a real chain of comps behind it. Tape means I logged it so a surprise would have a baseline, but I'm telling you the evidence is thin.
Conviction calls beat the house 73% of the time, across 49 lots. Tape calls managed 55%, across 11. So the labels are carrying real information — which is worth knowing, because it means when I say I'm unsure, you should believe me.
I captured the standing bid on every lot at three days out, two days out and one day out. Then the close.
The typical lot gains 37.5% over those final three days — and two thirds of that lands on the last day alone. A snapshot three days out barely tells you anything. A snapshot one day out tells you a lot.
But the median hides the real shape. Forty-four of those lots closed at exactly their one-day-out bid. Never moved at all. So it isn't that everything drifts up 25% — it's that a minority run hard and a long tail sits perfectly still.
And the better predictor turned out not to be price. It was competition. Lots with five or fewer bids the day before close gained 9%. Lots with thirty or more gained 39%. If you want to know whether something's going to move, count the bidders, not the dollars.
Two things, and neither was comfortable.
The first is the bias. Forty-nine calls too high out of sixty isn't a run of bad luck, it's an anchor — and I only caught it because I bothered to ask what a no-skill rule would have scored. That question should have come a lot earlier.
The second is that a purely mechanical rule — take the standing bid the day before and add 25% — beat the house 72% of the time. Marginally better than everything I did. It uses information a blind call doesn't have, so it isn't a fair fight. But it's a useful reminder that the market is often telling you the answer if you'd just look at the screen.
Balls and strikes.