Nvidia CEO's signature leather jacket sold at auction for almost a million dollars — a brand new one costs $9,000

The leather jacket worn and personally signed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold at Sotheby's auction house for $960,000 — roughly 75 million rubles at the current exchange rate. The sum is impressive on its own, but what makes it truly absurd is the backstory: the lot, titled "The Jensen Jacket," was originally estimated at just $40,000–$60,000 (around 3–5 million rubles). In the end, the final price beat the top of that estimate by almost 16 times over.

It's the signature black jacket from luxury brand Tom Ford — the same style Huang has worn to keynotes and events for years, making it his unofficial trademark. Bidding ran from July 7 to July 17 and closed after 65 bids. Its authenticity was verified rigorously: PSA experts photo-matched it against Huang's appearance at Hon Hai Tech Day in Taipei on October 18, 2023, while the autograph was separately authenticated by James Spence Authentication.

To grasp the scale of the overpay, one detail says it all: a brand-new, never-worn Tom Ford jacket from the same collection costs about $9,000 — roughly 700,000 rubles. In other words, the buyer paid a hundred times the retail price for the sole fact that a specific person had worn it. Huang himself has always treated his image with irony — back in 2016 he jokingly called himself "that guy in the leather jacket who repeats everything three times." And in 2024, Mark Zuckerberg got one of his jackets from him and put it perfectly: "It's worth more because it's used."

It's worth noting the proceeds aren't going into a billionaire's pocket. The auction was organized by venture fund Long Journey Ventures, with the money going to the nonprofit Edge Institute — an organization that hands out grants, scholarships, and residencies to young tech professionals. So this time, almost a million dollars for a worn jacket is going toward a genuinely good cause, according to Sotheby's itself.

Would you pay a hundred times the price for something just because a famous person wore it? Or is a million dollars for someone else's old jacket pure madness, even for charity? Share your thoughts in the comments.