Wayne Gretzky’s stick from the Edmonton Oilers' 1988 Stanley Cup-clinching game sold for $336,000 on Friday, setting a new record for any NHL hockey stick to sell publicly.
The 1988 Cup marked Gretzky's fourth and final championship and the second straight for the Oilers.
The stick, which is signed and inscribed by Gretzky, has sold once previously, appearing in a sealed auction at Sotheby’s in 2023. The price paid is not public information.
Prior to this sale, the record belonged to another Gretzky stick, used in his final game, which Sotheby’s sold for $140,000 in 2022.
As for the most expensive hockey stick ever sold, the record remains firmly held by the "Rutherford Stick,” believed to be created in the mid-19th century, which reportedly sold for more than $2 million in the early 2000’s.
The sale comes the day of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup, in which Gretzky’s former team, now led by generational talent Connor McDavid, will attempt to continue their comeback from a 3-0 series deficit against the Florida Panthers.
Gretzky is undoubtedly the king of hockey memorabilia, a disctinction he held long before Friday’s auction. His records include the most expensive NHL jersey ($1.452 million in 2022 for his final game with the Oilers), top hockey card ($3.75 million for one of just two PSA 10 examples of his 1979 O-Pee-Chee rookie card in 2021) and even the most expensive doodle created by a professional hockey player — a piece of paper with scribbles and an autograph drawn by a teenage Gretzky sold for $8,000 this month.
Hockey sticks are rarely considered valuable collectibles — at least not in the six-figure range, which makes this sale stand out even more.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.