WE LEFT THE 1990S BEHIND 25 YEARS AGO, BUT 2000’S ART, ENTERTAINMENT, AND SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS LIVE ON IN THE HERITAGE AUCTIONS ARCHIVES
By Rhonda Reinhart | December 16, 2025
In this edition of “Looking Back,” we turn back the clock to 2000, the year we all survived the Y2K bug. It was also the year Venus Williams won Wimbledon for the first time, the year Survivor debuted on CBS, the year Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was published, the year Hillary Clinton became the first First Lady to win elected office, and the year the Human Genome Project announced it had produced a rough draft of the human genome sequence. Keep reading for a look back at some of the year’s other major moments.
SPORTS
Widely regarded as the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady won an unprecedented seven Super Bowl championships, all while racking up seemingly endless records and awards. Even though Brady’s rookie year was 25 years ago, his 2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Ticket rookie card remains one of the most popular among modern football card collectors. This example, one of just 100 produced, sold for $1,590,000 in a May 2021 Heritage auction.
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART
Seated Man, a 2000 oil-on-canvas by Fernando Botero, hits all the notes that have made the Colombian painter and sculptor that rare combination: a crowd-pleasing household name whose paintings hold up to critical scrutiny. In this work, which realized $275,000 in a May 2018 Heritage auction, Botero revels in the exaggerated form of a man at rest but also lingers lovingly over small details, like a colorful still life set atop a table.
NATURE & SCIENCE
Officially known as NWA 2737, the “Diderot” meteorite, nicknamed for the 18th-century philosopher Denis Diderot, was found in several pieces in Morocco in 2000. This 185.6-gram specimen, which represents the main mass of the rare chassignite Martian meteorite, accounts for some 30 percent of the meteorite’s total known weight. One of the most important meteorite specimens on the planet, the piece sold for $187,500 in a March 2021 Heritage auction.
MOVIES
This iconic prop, which sold for $175,000 in a November 2021 Heritage auction, became the world’s most famous volleyball when Cast Away hit movie theaters in December 2000. Tom Hanks’ character in the film, a FedEx employee named Chuck Noland, “befriends” the ball, which he names Wilson, after getting stranded on a desert island after a plane crash. Today Wilson even has his own IMDb page.
MUSIC
When Britney Spears released her second studio album, Oops!…I Did It Again, in the spring of 2000, the poppy title track became a massive commercial success and was nominated for a Grammy Award. That summer, Spears embarked on a concert tour of the same name. During the tour, she donned this denim ensemble adorned with yellow and red leather flames while singing, you guessed it, “Oops!…I Did It Again.” The costume sold for $22,500 in a March 2024 Heritage auction.
TRADING CARD GAMES
This Pokémon Toshiyuki Yamaguchi No. 2 Trainer card, one of the prizes from a 2000 Japanese tournament, is so rare that many collectors were unaware that it even existed – until Heritage offered the card in a July 2023 auction. The one-of-one card, which sold for $137,500, was one of three prizes created to celebrate the No. 1, 2, and 3 Trainers, complete with pictures of the young winners. This card features the No. 2 Trainer surrounded by Chansey, Growlithe, Dudou, and the franchise mascot Pikachu.
DESIGN
Scottish artist Jennifer Lee began studying ceramics at Edinburgh College of Art in 1975. Twenty-five years later, she created this handsome stoneware vessel that made its gallery debut in the fall of 2000 and sold for $75,000 in a September 2022 Heritage auction. Today Lee’s work can be found in major collections across the globe, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2021, she received an Order of the British Empire for her service to ceramics.
WINE
A relatively small producer, making just a few thousand cases of red wine each year, Chateau Petrus has had the attention of notable French wine connoisseurs since the 1880s. Petrus, made from merlot grapes in France’s Bordeaux region, is consistently among the top wines in any vintage, including the 2000, which Wine Advocate’s Robert Parker described as “extremely full-bodied, with great fruit purity, an unmistakable note of underbrush, black truffle, intense black cherries, licorice, and mulberry.” In a June 2011 Heritage auction, an 11-bottle lot of Chateau Petrus 2000 realized $46,555.
