Memorable Soccer Memorabilia

A few years ago, I heard that a specialist team of ‘soccer memorabilia” experts from Sotheby’s were coming to the Albert Dock in Liverpool and that they had invited the local population, ala “Antiques Roadshow”, to bring them their soccer apparel to have it valued and also for them to be expensively photographed next to the actual Premier League trophy.

Ignoring the obvious joke about this being the closest that Liverpool and Everton fans have been to the Premier League trophy in twenty years, I decided to attend, the reason being that I had a soccer memento that I wanted valued. It was a Liverpool home shirt from the 1970’s that had been worn during a derby game by Liverpool legend Tommy Smith. It had his number on the back and had been signed by all the Liverpool players and management from that era; including the likes of Kevin Keegan, John Toshack, Brian Hall, Steve Heighway as well as Bill Shankley and Bob Paisley. The shirt was just collecting dust at the bottom of a drawer and had no sentimental value to me really so I hopped on the train and brought the shirt to the Tate Modern to be valued by the team.

It was here that I quickly learned what some people see as “soccer memorabilia” is actually quite different to what the ‘experts’ see as soccer memorabilia. There were a number of genuinely interesting items that people had brought in, obviously in the hope that these items would be worth thousands of pounds, but which were summarily dismissed by the experts as of being in huge value in sentimental terms alone. It’s hard really to put a value on what someone insists are “Kenny Dalglish’s tie ups from the FA Cup Final with Everton” when they could just be two bits of dirty cloth.

Other items I felt should have been valued more highly. I saw several signed soccer balls from the 1970’s onwards, valued at little more than what it would cost to buy a professional soccer ball today. As such I held out little hope that my shirt would be worth anything at all. It was quite sad to see the optimistic faces of people turn a deathly shade of grey and the fire fade from their eyes as their collection of programmes from the 1981-1982 season was valued at £30, rather than the £3.5m they were expecting. This was often met with a somewhat resigned shrug, the placing of the programmes back into the bag and the cliché that “they are worth far more than that in sentimental value to me...” which was probably a euphemism for “Get stuffed, they are worth millions really. I don’t believe you.”

They may have had a point. When I sat opposite the expert and handed him my shirt and told him the story of how we came to get it and where it came from he seemed interested enough. Almost enthusiastic (I think at this point, he’d had enough of telling people that John Aldridge’s snapped bootlace wasn’t really a lucrative memorabilia market). He said that if we wanted they would sell it for me at a specialist soccer memorabilia sale in London in a few months time. So I agreed. They estimated the sale price at £200-£300 and suggested a reserve of £200, which I happily agreed to.

The shirt sold a few weeks later for over £1100, minus commission and whatnot we received just under £1000 for it, which went into a family fund for holiday spends.

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to scour Anfield for any discarded tie ups, lost studs and broken bootlaces. It seems a safer investment than sticking money into a savings account that’s for sure.