Football Shirts | Collectibles & Collectors Items

Collecting football shirts can provide the ardent football fan with a great hobby. Whether you are collecting with the aim of producing a valuable future collection, or you are simply collecting for your love of the beautiful game, you should find these simple tips will help you along your way.

Define your Collection
Your specific interests will dictate what kind of collection you decide to build. If you are obsessed with one particular team, you may decide to focus all your efforts in this way. You can begin to amass a collection of your team's shirts throughout the years, resulting in a shrine dedicated to your team of choice. Or you may like to collect shirts of a particular style that encapsulate your era of choice; collecting shirts from any team of the time. You might be looking for current team kits or searching for signed, match-worn classic strips that will be worth a great deal in the future. Knowing exactly what you want to collect will help you greatly when searching for items to collect.

Where do you go to Build your Collection?
There are many sources you can use to start to begin building your collection. If you are collecting current team strips then you will need to do some research to find the best prices available. Whilst many sport shops offer huge ranges of shirts, they may not be competitive prices. Do a bit of homework yourself to get some figures together. Collecting classic or extremely collectable shirts can be a very different matter. Utilising the online resources available to you will provide the greatest search area on the planet. Online auction sites cannot be ignored when searching for that next item to add to your collection, but you must be sure of what you are buying. Unfortunately, in this day and age, the online auction sites are full of people trying to pull the wool over people's eyes by selling counterfeit goods. When you start collecting, ensure that you are getting what you pay for, and in the case of many types of collectable football shirts, these figures can get quite high. If you want to be sure of the authenticity of the shirts that you are collecting, you may want to buy from the club shops. As with large commercial organisations, you will however be paying top notch for these items.

Match-worn Shirts
Throughout a player's career they will tend to wear thousands of shirts. Generally football shirts are worn for only one match before a new one is issued; sometimes players may be issued up to four shirts for a single game. Most players will change their shirt at half time. So what happens to these shirts? Many will be given to charity, ready for auction. Some will end up being given to fellow players, supporters and a select few may end up in the club shop at the end of the season (usually at ridiculous prices). When you are looking to buy a match worn shirt it can be difficult to know whether you are getting a shirt that has actually been worn in a match. You may end up buying one of the spares from the dressing room, and there can be a huge difference to the future value of this shirt if this is the case. The only way to be sure is if you are handed the shirt by the player at the end of the match, straight off their own back. Match-worn shirts will often be slightly tarnished in some way. You should always be wary of an example that is in pristine condition. Look for frayed seams and damage around the edges of the felt names and numbers; these can give you your first clues.

Signed Football Shirts
When searching for signed football shirts to add to your collection, you need to be very careful. There are so many fakes on the market it can be difficult to know what to look out for. If buying from the club shop you will be paying highly inflated prices, but you can be certain that these items are the real deal. Can you imagine the PR surrounding the club if they themselves were found to be selling shirts that have been signed by the laundry guy! These football shirts will often come with a certificate of authenticity which should offer you some piece of mind.
Focussing your searches around the online auction or classified sites is more common. Unfortunately this is also where the sellers of counterfeit goods prey on unsuspecting buyers. As with many of these sites, you often have to rely on customer feedback and reviews. Never base your decision on photos alone, as the majority of pictures will not be those of the shirt you actually receive. If you are buying from a seller who specialises in these types of sales, have a look at the location of the signature on the shirt itself. If the shirts are counterfeit, you will often notice that player signatures always seem to be in the same location. In the real world this just doesn't happen. Finally, look at the price. Bear in mind that the actual unsigned replica shirts produced by the club usually sell for around �45 so signed ones will often be worth in excess of �100, maybe even double or triple that for the really high profile players. Remember, if the price seems too good to be true, then it often is.

Collecting football shirts, whether it is standard club replicas, classic strips, match worn, or signed, can be a very rewarding hobby. If you are a die-hard fan, then there can be nothing better than displaying that signed FA Cup winner's shirt on the wall in your front room. Definitely a trophy to be proud of.