Welcome to Auction Action, with Mike Carter.

I’ve been writing this piece for Hull City Kits for a few years now, and I think October 2024 may have tested my resolve more than any other month of covering the online auction sales of Hull City apparel.

There are no player shirts, and just two standard replica shirts from pre-2024. There are a handful of printed replicas’ which is where the most joy comes in this edition, and then an absolute bucket load of 2024/25 fourth shirts that people are flogging, ahead of the January re-stock…

Let’s start in the 1990s though, when you’d be less likely to find a queue half way around the stadium, waiting for the retail store to open.

This 1997/98 away shirt by Super League in XL sold for £60 over on eBay. In the four plus years we have been tracking sales for, this is the lowest value we have noticed one sell for. The previous lowest was £70 in July and the highest was £142 in October 2021 – towards the end of the pandemic lockdown shirt boom. 

Another shirt people clamoured for ‘back in the day’ was the 2022/23 third shirt by Umbro. The shirt was a re-release of the 2021/22 away shirt, with a sponsor change – which makes them very easy to date. This one in medium sold for £31.99, after two bidders battled it out to secure a new shirt.

Now we move into messy territory. There were over 25 different sales listings on eBay alone for the 120th Anniversary fourth shirt. We noticed that at first, as you’d expect, these were selling for big money. We covered a couple in last months Auction Action for sales worth £200 and £150, for an item that had been picked up, likely at the retail price of £55.

This month has shown that people will buy and pay almost whatever it would take to secure something they want, even if they are fully aware that they are paying a premium to someone who was a little bit luckier than them in securing one of the hottest pieces of Hull City merch in years.

We’re not going to list everything, as that would just be silly, but we will give you a brief rundown of what happened. Pretty much every adult size was available at some point during the month.

The shirt that sold for the highest value was XL and sold for £124.99 on Saturday 26th October. XL appears to be a popular size as other shirts in this size sold for £66, £72, £95 and £112 throughout the month.

There was a shirt in XXL that sold for a best offer, after being listed at £100, and another XXL that sold for £65. The highest valued large sold for £79, with some others being sold for £72, £70 and £60.

The cheapest medium was sold for £65, but this was one of the player specification slim fit shirts – Tiger Leisure’s plan B when shelf stock was depleted. Another, this time regular fit sold for £77. A small sold for its retail face value at £55, and towards the end of the month, a 4XL shirt sold for £46.

Does this mean the demand has quietened down now? The biggest price paid came towards the end of the month as did the smallest, so I guess we’ll know more when we cover November’s sales in a months’ time, to see what else appears.

There were some belting printed replica shirts available this month, so let’s break some of those down now. We believe that some of these shirts have had some features changed or added – more on that to come…

A 2001/02 home shirt by Patrick printed with the surname of striker Gary Alexander. The shirt was XL and sold for £89.95. I get the sense that this has been priced to suggest it could have been a player shirt, but here at HCK, we’re not convinced that it was. The appliques used look brand new, as opposed to first applied 20 years ago.

Another shirt that appears to have had some *recent* work done to it is this 2003/04 away shirt by Patrick, printed with Elliott 7. It states in the description, and you can see in the images, that this shirt once had a different name on the back and it has been changed. This shirt is small and sold for £40, or best offer.

We’re now three from three with modifications, as this 2007/08 home shirt by Umbro, printed with Windass and the number 9, also carries added game detail for the 2008 Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley. The seller has stated in the description that is isn’t a player worn shirt, so fair play there, but presumably the seller thinks that the printing adds value, maybe double the value of an original replica. Mileage may vary on that one, but there seems to be a generation of fans that don’t mind modern remakes of old, official appliques and will pay a premium for shirts with them, whereas some might consider the new ‘fake’ printing to be a bit unseemly. Either way, this shirt sold for £99.95.

The valuation on this one is staggering. It’s quite shocking that this 2008/09 home shirt by Umbro, in size medium printed with the name of cult hero Geovanni on the back sold for £101.99. I can only think that someone has believed that this shirt could be a player worn shirt to pay that price. It is really hard to be sure just from the images, but the name and number set to us, doesn’t look felt-like, as the ‘Lextra’ numbers by SportingiD were in 2008/09. It looks more like the shiny, TPU style used during City’s Premier League adventures of 2013/14 and 2014/15. Another shirt with potential modifications? We think so!

Guess what? We’ve got another one! This 2010/11 home shirt by adidas, has had a poppy applique applied to the front. This most certainly isn’t one issued to Nick Barmby, as it doesn’t carry the Neil Hudgell sponsor on the reverse. £100 was paid for this shirt, which without the poppy would have probably sold for under £40. Incredible, eh.

The last two, we believe were genuine Tiger Leisure bought shop replicas, the first is a 2013/14 home shirt by adidas in large, printed with the name and number of Robbie Brady. It sold for £35, which isn’t a bad price for a brand-new shirt with retail tags still attached.

To close, we have this 2021/22 away shirt by Umbro, in medium with the name and number of Tom Huddlestone applied. The listing carried the wrong season in its description so that could have hindered the seller slightly as this shirt commanded just one bid and it was that of the asking price of £25.

That’s your lot. We’ll be back in December, to take a look at the polyester that sold during this month, which could include poppy shirts worn by the Tigers against West Bromwich Albion on Remembrance Sunday.

Caveat emptor!