--- title: 'Deflategate' Football Sold at Auction for $43,740 description: One of the footballs at the center of the "Deflategate" scandal involving New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady sold at an auction canonical: https://time.com/3963597/deflategate-football-sold-auction/ author: Daniel D'Addario article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-18T16:53:26.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T09:22:39.772Z article:section: Sports og:title: 'Deflategate' Football Sold at Auction for $43,740 og:description: It was forecast to go for more than $100,000 og:url: https://time.com/3963597/deflategate-football-sold-auction/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10e500da06625ea9/69885b822dce01b28c9e4b1d/deflategate-football.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: deflategate football og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Deflategate' Football Sold at Auction for $43,740 twitter:description: It was forecast to go for more than $100,000 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10e500da06625ea9/69885b822dce01b28c9e4b1d/deflategate-football.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'Deflategate' Football Sold at Auction for $43,740 > Sponsored content. 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Lelands.com auctioned a football used in the AFC Championship Game.Lelands.com  by [Daniel D'Addario](https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/)  ## Daniel D'Addario Jul 18, 2015 4:53 PM UTC One of the footballs at the center of the “Deflategate” scandal involving New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady sold at an auction Saturday for $43,740. The football, sold by online auction house Lelands.com, is the first to have been made publicly available following this year’s controversial AFC Championship game between the Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts, during which the balls were found to have been underinflated. Patriots fan Laura Nichols put the ball up for auction, after it was handed to her during the [Patriots-Colts game](http://nypost.com/2015/06/18/how-2-pats-fans-found-out-they-owned-a-25k-deflategate-ball/); she’d believed it had been swapped in during the second half, after the balls were reinflated to normal levels, but discovered it was one of the balls in question after the release of the NFL’s Wells Report. Despite how expensive it was, the Deflategate ball still failed to meet one lofty prediction: The price tag on this football is lower than Joshua Evans, Lelands.com chairman, forecast when he said it could go for more than $100,000. \[[_ESPN_](http://espn.go.com/boston/nfl/story/%5F/id/13277587/football-afc-championship-game-sold-nearly-44k-auction)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3963597/deflategate-football-sold-auction/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3963597/deflategate-football-sold-auction/"},"headline":"'Deflategate' Football Sold at Auction for $43,740","datePublished":"2015-07-18T16:53:26.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T09:22:39.772Z","description":"It was forecast to go for more than $100,000","url":"https://time.com/3963597/deflategate-football-sold-auction/","keywords":["Football","U.S.","Tom Brady","deflategate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10e500da06625ea9/69885b822dce01b28c9e4b1d/deflategate-football.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel D'Addario","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/daniel-daddario/"}],"articleSection":"Sports","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt10e500da06625ea9/69885b822dce01b28c9e4b1d/deflategate-football.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"deflategate football","caption":"deflategate football","creditText":"Lelands.com","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/sports/","name":"Sports"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/football/","name":"Football"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3963597/deflategate-football-sold-auction/","name":"'Deflategate' Football Sold at Auction for $43,740"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"This Is What Physics Says About Deflategate","description":"Ainissa Ramirez, physicist and author of Newton's Football, talks through why weather can't explain deflate-gate","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/TECrbcbF/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-01-22T23:26:06.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TECrbcbF.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3963597/deflategate-football-sold-auction/","duration":"PT1M57S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3963597/deflategate-football-sold-auction/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```