2024 is in the history books now, but we still have a bit of business in that year left despite the calendar ticking over to 2025, as we review the most notable online sales of Tiger tat in December 2024 (writes Mike Carter)… 

One of the biggest bargains of the year was had with a long sleeved 2008/09 home shirt by Umbro, featuring Dean Marney’s surname on the back and all the appliques you’d see on a player shirt, and it sold for just £25! We’ve found images of Dean wearing a long-sleeved shirt in a few games from City’s first Premier League campaign, and we reckon this is a player-issue at worst, match-worn shirt at best. What a find. Well done to its new owner.

This next one is quite interesting. Ola Aina is currently in great form for current club Nottingham Forest, he had a season long loan stint with the Tigers in 2017/18, and this home shirt by Umbro from that season carries the WWF chest applique used for the game against Sunderland in September 2017. It was listed with a start price of £99.99, but with the best offer option active. It sold within 3 hours of being listed, so someone was pretty quick to make the seller an offer they believed to be acceptable. 

What is quite interesting about this shirt though, is that aside from Nouha Dicko’s shirt which had just his signature, the shirts from the game were squad signed ahead of auction. We know the new owner of this player shirt and speculate that it may be a spare shirt from that game.

From player shirts we’ll move onto the replica market, and start with this 1982/83 away shirt by Admiral, in size small. It is incredibly rare that you’ll find anything from this era in a ‘large’ size, so it’s no surprise that this is a small. It sold for £122 after 7 bidders fought out over 22 bids for this shirt.

The reissue of the 1992/93 Matchwinner home shirt seems to have been a triumph, and you wonder if over time they’ll reissue all the shirts City wore between 1988 and 1993. Surely the green and white chequerboard 1990-92 away shirt will get a 2025 re-release, right? Until that happens, if you want an official (and original) version of the shirt you’re going to be looking at paying something like this. £170 was paid for a shirt in size medium last month. The last two we tracked both in size large sold in 2023 for £143.31 and £160.43.

One of the more elusive shirts of the Noughties is this away shirt from 2000/01 by Avec in XL. It sold as a ‘worldwide’ listing, meaning the value is in USD. The exchange rate at sale point put it at £123.59, before any import tax and postage charges.

Staying in the early 2000s this 2001/02 away shirt by Patrick in size XL sold for £38. One sold in May 2024 for £36 and September 2024 for £40. We’re probably not going to find a better average shirt price than that for a while.

To close we have this 2014/15 home shirt in size XL printed with the surname of Croat, Nikica Jelavic. This shirt actually sold twice in December. Firstly for £15 then again for £22.50 just 16 days later. 

That’s all for both December and 2024. We’ll be back in February to see how 2025 has started for Auction Action! 

Caveat emptor!