White Sox Pope Hats Resell for Up to $100

This is the latest MLB promo to explode online

News

By RC Staff

12 August 2026

Key Points

The White Sox originally planned the giveaway for roughly 3,000 fans before expanding it stadium wide
The Sox drew 38,113 fans for the sellout game, so tens of thousands of hats went out the door
Resale prices on eBay are landing between $60 and $90, well above the cost of a ticket

As you may or may not know, Pope Leo XIV is a big fan of the White Sox. Ever since the word got out, the organization has been eager to capitalize on the connection (and wouldn’t you, if your biggest fan had God on speed dial?). For their latest promotion, they gave away nearly 40,000 White Sox-branded papal mitres – or slightly less eloquently: pope hats.

White Sox Papal Mitre Giveaway Details

We covered this giveaway back in April when it was still a niche promotion tied to five specific sections at Rate Field. The hats honor Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born, lifelong White Sox fan who has worn the team’s cap at the Vatican and reportedly caught wind of the promotion himself. Demand for tickets tripled within days of the announcement, and the Sox scrapped the section restriction entirely, opting to hand a black and green papal miter to every fan who walked through the gates.

That decision turned a tight, collectible-feeling giveaway into one of the largest single-night promotions the team has ever run. The Sox ordered north of 40,000 hats to cover the sellout crowd, and the game itself delivered on the hype: three home runs, a dugout hat celebration, and a walk-off loss in extra innings that didn’t dampen the mood on the concourse.

White Sox Pope Hat

Given how many hats hit the market at once, a big price drop would have been the expected outcome. Instead, resale listings are settling in the $60 to $90 range, roughly two to three times the cost of a typical ticket in the eligible sections. That’s not the kind of number that gets anyone quitting their job, especially next to some of the MLB promos we’ve flagged this year, but it’s a real premium for an item that shipped in five-figure quantities overnight.

The math still works in a reseller’s favor. A $30 ticket plus a hat that flips for $60 to $90 means the game essentially paid for itself, with beer and hot dog money left over. We’ll take that any day.

Bottom Line

This is a solid, unspectacular flip for anyone who already had a ticket. It’s not the $100-plus outcome we floated when the giveaway was still limited to a few sections, but a $60 to $90 return on a hat that came free with attendance is nothing to complain about.

It’s also not the first time the White Sox have turned an unusual cultural crossover into real profits for resellers. When Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami requested the club install bidets before he arrived in Chicago, it created a new meme among fans that was eventually immortalized in the first ever official MLB bobblehead featuring a bidet. It just goes to show that creativity a willingness to lean into the joke can take you a long way.