Kobe Bryant’s locker fetches $2.9 million, breaks auction record

American professional basketball player late Kobe Bryant's Staples Centre locker that he used in his career was sold for a record-setting $2.9 million.

It was one of the most valuable sports lockers to be sold at auction, Sotheby’s reported.

Moreover, this is the Black Mamba's third-most expensive piece to be sold at the auction, following a rookie jersey that went for $3.69 million in 2021.

Earlier in 2007-08, the second-most valuable signed jersey from his lone MVP season was sold for $5.6 million, ESPN reported.

Initially, the locker was bidding at $750,000, but the final twenty minutes were game-changing moments when four bidders pushed the sale to just under $3 million.

Meanwhile, Brahm Wachter, Sotheby's head of modern collectibles, said some sweet words about the pieces of the well-known basketball player.

"Kobe Bryant's locker is not merely a piece of memorabilia," Brahm Wachter, Sotheby's head of modern collectibles, said in a statement. "But a profound relic from one of basketball's most iconic figures. Today's price highlights not only Kobe's enduring legacy but also the exceptional nature of this unique item."

During the Staples Centre's 2018 renovations, an unnamed maintenance worker saved Bryant's locker from demolition and sold it to a private collector, who reunited the locker with Bryant's nameplate.

According to sources, this sale will benefit the Los Angeles Lakers Youth Foundation, but the estimate wasn't disclosed.