--- title: "Pelé's 1958 World Cup final shirt sells for $4.9m" description: "The blue number 10 shirt worn by a 17-year-old Pelé when Brazil won its first World Cup in 1958 has sold for $4.9 million at auction, making it the second most valuable football jersey ever sold, behind only a Diego Maradona shirt." category: "Sports" category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/sports author: "Noah Andersen" published: 2026-07-17T01:36:00.000Z updated: 2026-07-17T01:36:00.000Z canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/pele-1958-world-cup-shirt-sells-4-9-million tags: ["pele", "world-cup", "football", "auction", "memorabilia"] --- # Pelé's 1958 World Cup final shirt sells for $4.9m The blue number 10 shirt worn by a 17-year-old Pelé when Brazil won its first World Cup in 1958 has sold for $4.9 million at auction, making it the second most valuable football jersey ever sold, behind only a Diego Maradona shirt. A football shirt worn by Pelé in the most important match of his young career has sold for $4.9 million, a price that reflects both the rarity of the item and the enduring aura of the player who wore it. The blue number 10 jersey, worn by Pelé in the 1958 World Cup final, [was sold at Sotheby's in New York](https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/7/17/brazilian-football-legend-peles-world-cup-shirt-sells-for-4-9-million) after competitive bidding. It was in that final, in Stockholm, that a 17-year-old Pelé scored twice as Brazil beat the hosts Sweden 5-2 to claim the country's first world title, announcing himself to a global audience and beginning one of the sport's greatest careers. ## Second only to Maradona The sale places the shirt near the very top of the market for football memorabilia. It is now [the second most expensive football jersey ever sold at auction](https://www.staradvertiser.com/2026/07/16/breaking-news/peles-1958-world-cup-final-shirt-sells-for-4-9-million/), behind the roughly $9.3 million paid in 2022 for the shirt Diego Maradona wore against England in the 1986 World Cup, the match of his infamous "Hand of God" goal and a sublime solo strike. That the two most valuable jerseys should belong to Pelé and Maradona is fitting. The pair are routinely named among the greatest players in history, and the prices their relics command reflect the mythologies that have grown around them: Pelé the youthful prodigy who conquered the world at 17, Maradona the mercurial genius who dragged his country to glory almost single-handed. ## A career that reshaped the game Brazil's victory in 1958 was only the beginning for Pelé. He would go on to win two further World Cups, in 1962 and 1970, the only player to be part of three winning squads, and he scored prolifically for club and country across a career that made him a global ambassador for the game long after he stopped playing. When he died in December 2022, tributes came from far beyond the world of sport, testament to a figure whose fame had transcended football itself. Items connected to him have accordingly become prized collectors' pieces, valued not merely as sporting equipment but as artefacts of cultural history. ## The pull of the relic The sum paid for the shirt is a reminder of how memorabilia has become a serious market, with the most storied pieces changing hands for millions. For collectors, owning the actual garment worn in a defining moment offers a tangible link to an era and a legend that no photograph or highlight reel can quite match. For everyone else, the sale is an occasion to remember the match itself: a teenager in a borrowed-looking blue shirt, outplaying seasoned professionals on the biggest stage, and hinting at the extraordinary story that was about to unfold. Nearly seven decades on, the shirt he wore that day is worth a fortune, and the moment it represents remains one of football's founding legends.