We’ve exhausted 2023’s offerings of Tigers related polyester available online, so it’s time to see what 2024 has for us. January is a funny month, as we all count the cost of the recent festivities and gift giving, but this one felt like the longest month ever!

It did though, offer up opportunities for new items to be added to the stashes of shirt and other apparel collectors, and we’ll take a look now on this latest edition of Auction Action (writes Mike Carter).

Starting as we tend to with match-worn and player issued shirts, a few were listed without being stated as such. Could the previous owners simply not have realised? It created some bargain opportunities…

First up is this 1995-97 away shirt by Super League, with long sleeves, Nationwide League sleeve patches and the number 5 applied on the back. It was listed at auction with a £50 start price, but also with a buy-it-now price. It’s not really a surprise that someone recognised this for what it was and snapped it up using the buy-it-now feature for £149 after just 7 minutes of being listed. Wow! There’s no doubt this is a player shirt, long sleevers weren’t commercially available and kept as player stock, the sleeve patches and yellowy flock numbers are all as they should be. Replicas of this shirt have gone for north of £200, so this is a phenomenal price, and we regret first seeing it in sold items!

We have a sneaky-feeling that this Richard Sneekes (see what we did there?) long sleeved, 2001/02 away shirt by Patrick was match-worn and was picked up for the opening bid of £50. The Dutchman played at Oxford in March 2002 when City mashed up, wearing the silver away shirts with alternate silver shorts and the home socks. An image of Sneekes shows him wearing long sleeves but without the white, oval Nationwide League patches. City had a bit of a tinpot approach to kit preperation back then, routinely running out of patches or full size player numbers as the season wore on, and it was usually players who signed well into the season who were given smaller, replica-size numbers and letters if there weren’t enough left.

We can’t be 100%, but we have a strong suspicion that this is a matchworn, yes it’s missing sleeve patches, yes the letters are smaller than what would be used earlier in the season, but those things happened back then and there is photographic evidence of it, and the odds of a fan buying a long sleeved shirt (and we’re not sure the away shirts could be bought in long sleeved versions like the home shirts could) and adding Sneekes 25 to honour a player who was only ever going to be a short term signing seem remote.

There were no bargain to be had when an entrepreneural Bristol City fan cadged a matchworn shirt when we played there on a Friday night in December and quickly stuck it on eBay. You could argue that Tyler Morton has all the credentials to be the Player Of The Year at Hull City due to his consistently impressive performances. This matchworn 2023/24 primary shirt by Kappa with all the fixings (SkyBet and Together sleeve patches, Anex sleeve sponsor, full size EFL amber numbers and letters, McVities back of shirt sponsor) sold for £348.80. An impressive price for a regular season shirt.

Onto classic replicas and there was a 1992/93 away shirt by Matchwinner available in month. Described as being in “very good condition” it sold for £219.99. It was listed from the Ukraine with the best offer feature enabled, but to us it looks like it was not used (though it’s becoming increasingly harder to tell).

A 1998/99 home shirt by Olympic in size medium sold for £149.99. In our opinion this is a premium price for this shirt and one that has been priced higher than we would expect. The condition looks good, which could have been the deal sealer for the seller.

Staying on 1998/99 Olympic shirts here’s an away in XL. This one sold at auction and finished at £97.06, a price much more in the bracket of what we’d expect from shirts of this era in the current market.

A 1999/00 away shirt by Avec in size XL was available for £70, a price that was paid not long after it was listed. The seller has some other City shirts available, with this one being a nice pickup for someone.

This green 2006/07 goalkeeper jersey in green with 12 Duke on the back is curiously signed by the squad of 2008/09, and has finally sold after years, and I mean years, of repeat listings on eBay. It sold for the £90 asking price, which is surprising, since it has sat there untouched that long. Squad signed shirts make us itch. Squad signed shirts, signed by a squad that didn’t wear them make our eyes bleed! Not good!

A replica 2013/14 adidas away shirt in size XXXL sold for £16. Considering the fact it had Huddlestone 8 applied, I was surprised this didn’t finish with a higher value than it did.

Right, that’s your lot for now, see you again next month to see what you could have won in February. Caveat emptor!