Auction Action – January 2012

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Sex sells they say, but not always for much. ‘Chambermaid Julia’, an eBay seller, paired what appeared to be an unsponsored 1995-97 City away shirt with suspenders while modelling the size small shirt for a recent auction.

Though the seller’s marketing style drew attention on the #hcafc Twitter hashtag, the shirt garnered only two bids, selling for a mere £5.50.

Is this a reflection on Julia’s charms or on the lack of City fans that can get into a small shirt? We may never know, but a large Liverpool shirt went for just £11.50, despite a whole lot of leg being on show in the item photo .

Attracting far more offers was a Pelada training jacket (size 46/48 tellingly) from 1994/95.

Fans of foreign words may know that Pelada is a Portuguese term that roughly translates as ‘naked’ and is used in Brazil to describe kickabouts, ‘stripped down’ games of football if you will.

Pelada is also a Melton Mowbray based teamwear manufacturer who back in the mid-90s made kits for West Brom, Reading, Mansfield and City. They were tasked with making a non-copyright violating facsimile of Matchwinner’s tiger stripe 1992/93 kit but succeeded only in producing the vilest City home shirt EVER! They did produce a moderately handsome jade, white and black away kit though. Oddly, all the training gear featured green trim (this appears to be a Pelada thing, referencing Brazil throughout their range), and this City training jacket had three green stripes split by two white stripes on its zip up collar.

The jacket was bid on seven times by three seperate bidders and sold for £46.00.

Mid-month, someone paid £49.99 for a 2008/09 ‘Windass 9’ home shirt featuring a Remembrance Day poppy appliqué on the front.

We can’t help but wonder if whoever bought this shirt thinks they now own something matchworn or player issued, even though the seller, ‘legendsandicons’, didn’t list the shirt that way.

City only started using poppy appliqués in 2009/10, the season after this shirt was worn, furthermore this shirt doesn’t have the Premier League sleeve transfers.

A shirt that might well have been worn by Deano is this long sleeved ‘Super League’ 1995-97 home shirt that has the correct competition badges on the sleeves and number 10 on the back in the appropriate typeface for a player worn shirt. The auction is still live if you fancy bidding, but as always remember the first rule of bidding, caveat emptor!

Auction Action – December 2011

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The big news in the world of auctioned Tigers tat this month is the sale of match worn shirts from the November 5th home game against West Ham. The shirts feature red poppy appliqués as the game was the nearest fixture to Remembrance Sunday. All of the shirts worn that day are available to buy (substitutes and all), with the proceeds from the auction going to the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal – a most noble cause.

At the time of writing, Robert Koren’s shirt was valued highest by frantically bidding Tiger Nationals, whereas substitute James Harper’s shirt was going for £NotMuch, which will probably get him some stick on the training ground. All of the listings are on the Tiger Leisure eBay store page.

Among other shirts catching the eye of City fans on Ebay is a “Mid 60s soccer replica” (shown below). At first glance, it appears to be a pretty good attempt at recreating the shirt City wore during the 1964/65 season.

60s styleHowever closer examination reveals one critical error. Though the pitiful, emaciated tiger head crest was used on many different shirts between 1947 and 1975, it did not appear on the 1964/65 jerseys (as seen below). That year’s shirts had two black hoops (not bands, as they were on the back too) and would surely have been considered classics had they been worn with black shorts.

Instead, amber shorts were used and the dearth of contrast across the full kit made it look washed out, it was derisively termed ‘the banana kit’ and lasted but one year. The idea of rehabilitating the mid-Sixties kit’s reputation with a modern replica shirt is a laudable one, but the execution could be better.

We note that several 1992/93 season Matchwinner/Bonus tiger stripe shirts have fetched in excess of £150 for their sellers in recent weeks, though a slightly less than perfect condition shirt (size large) went for a ‘mere’ £87 (plus postage) on Wednesday. In contrast a 1982-83 Admiral home shirt went for just short of £105 last week.

How much would you be willing to part with for an old/match worn shirt, and what is your holy grail?