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June in a World Cup year! Wooooo! The start of a full month of games taking in the best talent from across the globe! Sunburnt blokes in tank tops walking out of Big Tesco with enough Carling to inebriate all of Malta! The emergence of new talent and the inevitable linking with Premier League clubs! Diligently filling in wallcharts until the third week when you lose enthusiasm! Interminable Twitter ranting about the immediate future of Gareth Southgate! Wooo! Festival of football! It’s coming home until it’s not!
What? The World Cup is in winter? Because an oil rich state with an appalling human rights record bought off all the right people? How depressing, I need to trawl through eBay listings for CityTat to cheer myself up. Speaking of which, here’s Mike (@MikeyCarter90) with a round up of the best, and maybe worst, City apparel available online in June…
June was a good month for player shirt availability, however only two items made it to the completed listings page. Is this down to unrealistic pricing? Has the lockdown(s) inspired spike in matchworn shirt collecting interest fallen away? Have people realised that at a time when tubs of Lurpak cost the equivalent of a platinum bucket full of diamonds, matchworn shirts aren’t quite the ‘investment’ some hoped and actually there’s not much liquidity to an asset when it’s a 2003 Matt Wicks home shirt (long sleeved)! Maybe all of them, but let’s see what the virtual auction hammer did come down on.
The last time Hull City had a home shirt that spanned two full seasons was in the Noughties, 2002/03 and 2003/04 to be precise. This Patrick/Bonus shirt in long sleeves was issue to/worn by Marc Joseph, and it sold for a very reasonable £59. An absolute steal if your name is Tony, if not seeing that written on the shirt by Marc Joseph might affect your valuation. Why people get what are, for fans of a club anyway, historical artefacts personally dedicated to them in permanent marker completely baffles me. A decision made in the moment 20 years ago has had a long lasting impact on the value of this shirt, which was part of a collection that belonged to a one-time regular sponsor of individual games, players and matchballs. Most of the collection was sold off-line, but the harder to move on items have been listed on the former sponsor’s behalf.
I have looked over this shirt quite a few times since it has sold, and I still can’t work out if I think the sleeve patches and nameset are pro-spec or not. Is this Abel Hernandez 2016/17 away shirt player issue/worn? The Uruguayan was known for his generosity when it comes to giving away matchworn shirts, but it could easily just be a printed replica. It was picked up for £30, which suggests I wasn’t the only one with doubts. What do you think?
***UPDATE – As @HullCityMWS points out, this shirt is size large, and Abel H. matchworns tended to be medium***
Just as the asking price for match issue/worn shirts has taken a tumble, so has what people are prepared to pay for rare replicas. What was recently a seller’s market has swung in favour of the buyers. This 1992/93 Matchwinner home shirt in medium sold for £304 in June. Sure that’s a lot for a mere replica, but it’s almost half of what people were paying this time last year. At least 13 tiger stripe shirts have sold since September last year and demand seems to be slowing. Over saturation might be a factor, as might high cost of living.
We have seen the 1997/98 away shirt by Super League sell for as much as £142 in October last year, and as little as £62.95 in January 2022, so this one selling for £119.99 feels like its in the right ballpark for what a seller might expect for this shirt.
This 1999/00 away shirt by Avec in XL sold for £100 this month, despite the listing noting a torn label and pinprick sized hole on the front. We featured a purple away shirt last month and that one sold for £79.99.
Third shirts have a tendency to retain their value, and here’s an example, a 2014/15 third shirt in a size small that finished at £40, essentially the RRP when new eight years ago.
2017/18 brought us a wonderful shirt triple, not. that the lister of this navy peony third shirt knows that, adding “Unsure on year of release” to the description as if they live in a world without search engines. This was a highly sought after shirt and if you missed out when they was on retail sale then £40 is a reasonable price to pay to pick one up four years later. Another example of third shirts holding their value.
Jay-Jay Okocha shirts are cropping up a lot of late, they’re certainly one of the most popular printed replicas. This Jay-Jay 2007/08 home shirt in long sleeves sold for £70.
It’s not often that you see a printed up goalkeeper jersey, for sale or otherwise. This 2014/15 Steve Harper jerseys in purple sold not long after it was listed for £30. It is possible that someone thought it was player issue on account of the sleeve patches and nameset, but that isn’t the case.
The last of the notable printed replicas… Swede Seb Larsson’s had a relatively short stay in Hull, playing for the Tigers for just one season. This 2017/18 away shirt by Umbro has been printed with his name and number, and sold for £35.
Finishing the month’s round up with something a bit different… big branding was very much a thing in the 1990s and Leicestershire firm Pelada were determined to get maximum exposure from their Hull City gear. This sweatshirt in size large finished at £83.72, and a training jacket in size XL sold for £54.99.
That ‘s it for June, we’ll see you next month to round up July’s appealing apparel. Though there is no World Cup to enjoy this summer, the women’s Euros will give us a dose of international football as we wait for the domestic season to restart. Good luck Lionesses!
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