Four-year-old Tom Brady was sitting in Candlestick Park when Joe Montana found Dwight Clark for The Catch. Brady later remembered crying/whining because he couldn’t see the field over the adults, then watching the whole stadium rise when Montana threw the winning touchdown.

That was Brady’s first glimpse of the quarterback he would grow up idolizing. Decades later, Brady would become the player Montana’s career was constantly measured against, and would eventually take one of Montana’s memorabilia records. For a man who spent his childhood looking up to Montana, there was one more twist left in the story.

Montana has taken that record back, with his Super Bowl XXIV jersey selling for $1.515M, at Treasure Trove, ESPN reported. The sale broke the previous record of $1.39 million for Tom Brady’s final NFL game-worn jersey.

Treasure Trove CEO AJ Scaramucci believes the jersey could be worth even more, and the reason is simple:

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There are only so many jerseys that were actually worn by all-time greats on the biggest stage, and even fewer tied to a specific championship performance.

“When you zoom out and contextualize this jersey, but also a lot of game-worn jerseys by the GOATs, whether it be in football or basketball or whatever the sport is, you think about the trading card markets,” Scaramucci said. “There are huge dislocations from an investment perspective in this market, and snagging this jersey, of which there’s an unbelievably scarce number of these jerseys out there … I would argue that game-worn sports memorabilia of this caliber is dramatically and just freakishly underpriced relative to, say, the trading card market.”

According to ESPN, Montana has three Super Bowl jerseys despite having played in four. He wore the same jersey in Super Bowls XIX and XXIII, while the record-breaking jersey is the one from Super Bowl XXIV.

That other jersey has its own remarkable story. Before Super Bowl XXIII, Montana’s wife, Jennifer, pulled it from a scrapbook and packed it in his stadium bag with a note: “Maybe you want to wear it again.” He did, then led the 49ers on the famous 92-yard game-winning drive against the Cincinnati Bengals. That jersey sold for $1.212 million in 2023.

The jersey that now holds the record, meanwhile, witnessed Montana at the other end of his Super Bowl career. In Super Bowl XXIV, he completed 22 of 29 passes for 297 yards and five touchdowns, earning his third Super Bowl MVP award as San Francisco crushed the Denver Broncos 55-10.

The 49ers’ 55-10 victory remains the largest winning margin in Super Bowl history. The performance also capped a remarkable season: San Francisco went 14-2, led the NFL in scoring and finished third in points allowed.

It was also Montana’s final Super Bowl. He played in three more postseasons after that game but never returned to the championship.

The jersey was previously sold for $720,000 in 2023. At $1.515 million now, its value has more than doubled in roughly three years.

That earlier $1.212 million Montana sale is where the Brady-Montana memorabilia tug-of-war began. The Super Bowl XIX and XXIII jersey briefly took the NFL auction record from a $480,000 Brady jersey in 2023. Brady’s final-game jersey then reclaimed the top spot at $1.39 million.

However, the modern GOAT may be happy to see his record broken by Montana’s jersey. After all, Brady is one of his biggest fans, having idolized Montana growing up in San Francisco.

Even though Tom Brady has retired, Joe Montana is still his idol

Perhaps the one area where Brady has gone past Montana is the number of Super Bowl wins. Montana has four, while Brady has seven. In his own right, Brady deserves to be called the GOAT. But before he became the star he is today, Brady’s hero was Joe Montana.

Growing up in the city, the Patriots icon visited Candlestick often to watch Niners games. Brady wrote on Instagram that he witnessed ‘The Catch’ at Candlestick: Montana threw the game-winning touchdown in the 1981 NFC Championship, sending San Fran to the Super Bowl. Brady was four at that time, and he recalled crying the entire first half because he couldn’t see the game because of the grown-ups.

“When you grow up in the Bay Area and you have that, it gives you a lot of reasons to love sports and love football,” Brady said in 2025 at a Fanatics event. “And that’s when I fell in love with football because of Joe Montana. And he’s still my idol today. He was an incredible quarterback. And he set the tone every single day for what greatness really looks like. … Nobody performed in Super Bowls as great as this guy.”

Brady, in 2016 (by which time he’d won three Super Bowls, and won his fourth that season), maintained that he’d never be Joe Montana’s equal, and the latter is in a “league of his own.” Montana’s Super Bowl jersey resetting the market perhaps proves just that.