The retro football kit market has become a big thing in recent years, with hundreds of people re-selling their own shirts for profit as collector’s items. However, like any valuable or limited items, there are also a lot of pitfalls if you try to sell them without preparing properly.
If you are interested in buying a vintage football kit, either for profit or just to own, then here is everything you will want to keep an eye out for.
Spotting Untrustworthy Sellers
Just like if you want to watch soccer streams online, there are a handful of sites that archive and list historical football kits currently on sale, acting as specialist sites for you to buy them directly from other people. However, there are also sites that try to imitate this, as well as listings that are actually completely fake.
Ideally, you want to try and make sure that your chosen seller or platform is safe before you purchase anything. This includes looking into the images they claim to have taken themselves, comparing the images to the actual design of the original shirt, and seeing if the price matches up properly.
Odd Prices
Sellers can put vintage football shirts at weird prices, but some of these are not mistakes. Classic football shirts being sold for a fraction of the cost might be either forged designs or a legitimate shirt from a seller who does not know what they are actually selling.
On the other hand, a price that is obviously over-inflated is often that way because a scammer is trying to sell the shirt to somebody who is not sure what they should be paying. This is not always true, especially if the shirt recently dropped in value and the listing has not been manually updated, but it can happen quite often.
Incorrect Pictures
Pictures that do not line up with the real design or are inconsistent with one another can be a bad sign, too. This can mean that they are auto-generated listings or made by people who just want to attract attention and get quick, high-value sales.
Some picture mistakes can also be the result of somebody stealing images from another site or a selection of sites. This is not necessarily a problem, but it can mean that you are not seeing the classic old football shirts that they are selling, just whatever images they could find online.
Obvious Bots
Sometimes, these listings are made by bots that really are not very well designed. You will see a lot of keywords mashed together in listings or descriptions, sometimes with bad translations or spelling. Titles are even more obvious since they can be written out in a way that screams scamming or attempts at botting the market.
These bots are not always a bad thing, but you generally still want to buy from a real person when it comes to niche items like this. Otherwise, there is no guarantee that you will get the item you want or even get an item at all.
Should I Buy A Retro Football Kit?
Retro football shirts are fairly easy to come by online, although looking for specific ones is much harder. If you use the regular marketplaces and do not let yourself get sucked into scams, then you will easily be able to buy a few, whether you plan to keep them or sell them later down the line.
Remember that they are collector’s items, so condition is everything: a retro football kit that is missing some pieces or damaged in some way can be a lot less valuable, so always make sure you are buying the item in the condition that you expected it to be sold for.
On top of that, niche markets like this can have quite a range of different communities and groups that end up buying and selling in specific ways, which can make certain shirts and kits more expensive on one site compared to another. Prices are not fixed and are usually based on desirability or rarity.
If you are interested in buying some, remember that prices fluctuate. What could be cheap one day might skyrocket to a higher price if that team suddenly becomes relevant again. For example, if a football team decides to bring back an older kit design, then you might need to prepare for the price of that old kit to either increase or decrease dramatically.