The Top 5 places to buy football shirts
Collecting football kits isn’t a new phenomenon but over recent years the hobby of collecting football shirts has sky rocketed. We take a look into the top 5 places to buy football shirts from, whether it be a classic from the 80’s or a brand new shirt for the up and coming season we have you covered!
Classic Football Shirts
If your looking to buy a retro football shirt and you haven’t heard of Classic Football Shirts you must have been living under a rock! Over the past Decade or so Classic Football Shirts have been growing at an unbelievable rate and their stock pile of shirts just gets bigger and bigger. If you want to browse their website there are thousands of great football shirts available.
Each shirt is reviewed to ensure it is a real shirt (not a fake or modern remake) and is in good condition, each shirt is tagged on their website under a grading bracket of either Mint, Excellent, Very Good, Good or Fair which is determined by the age of the shirt and if there are and tarnished, pulls or other damage (for example damage to sponsor’s or name sets).
If you are looking to really splash your cash and get a match worn or player issue shirt you can be confident in it authenticity when buying from Classic Football Shirts.
Official Retailers
Of course, if you want to be 100% sure that the kit you are buying is official and is of the best quality buying from the kit manufacturer is always going to be the best way. Usually you end up paying a premium for this kind of offering with Nike selling their 22/23 home kits at £74.95 for an adult size.
However, there are a few tips and tricks for getting some extra discounts! The first is to look in the store outlets. There are many outlets situated all around the UK which stocks kits that are coming towards the end of the active season at heavily reduced prices. An example is in April 2022 Adidas had Away kits from the 21/22 season on sale for as little as £17.99 which is reduced by over 75%. These kits don’t have any defects and are simply on sale to clear older stock! You can often find heavily reduced kits from outside the Premier League aswell. We have seen La Liga, Bundesliga, MLS & Liga MX kits all reduced in various outlets.
However, if you are wanting to purchase a kit closer to the start of the season there are still a few ways you can save some extra money when buying from the kit manufacturer. Below are a list of some kit manufactures and a list of ways to save some money!
Nike
- Student Discount (10% off)
- Birthday Discount (10% off)
Adidas
- Student Discount (upto 35% off full price & upto 20% off Outlet Prices)
Castore
- Student Discount (15% off)
- Key Worker Discount (20% off)
- Strava Discount (20% off when you run 10k in the purchasing month)
- Refer a friend scheme
Puma
- Student Discount (10% off)
- Refer a friend scheme
- Promotions Page (Puma regularly update this page with discount codes/offers)
Charity Shops
Charity Shops have always been known to have the odd hidden Gem and this is the case when it comes to football shirts.
Now if you’re looking for a specific shirt then going around Charity Shops could be a near impossible task but if you are in the hunt for some bargains or looking for some shirt inspiration then your local charity shops could be just the place to start.
There have been some great finds in Charity shops with Ellis Platten (YouTuber who goes under the channel name ‘AwayDays’) finding some absolute bargains in his Charity Shop, and more recently his ‘Football shirt hunting’ series.
Ebay/Depop
These auction style websites are a prime place for picking up a bargain. However, they can also be a place that is flooded with fake shirts as well, so you have to have your whits about you. If you see a Fiorentina 92/93 shirt selling for a couple of quid, its almost certainly not real! Having said that, you certainly can pick up some great shirts at massively reduced prices!
When searching you will likely have filters where you can specify a price range, select a specific size, the kit colour and more to limit the search results. If you want to be more generic and just browse what shirts are available a simple search of ‘Football Search’ on ebay resulted in over 960,000+ football shirts popping up for me to scroll through. A similar search on Depop resulted in 50,232 items at the time of writing.
I will say again though, when buying online be careful of fake shirts! The best thing to do is check people profiles to see if they are reputable and throughly read the product description. Some people will openly admit a product is a fake or a remake while the sellers profile will hold reviews from other people who have purchased to help you make an informed decision. Both Ebay & Depop have the right to claim if a product is mis-sold which can be some comfort but you may not always win your claim so be aware!
Independent Sellers/Collectors
Social Media is full of resellers who are looking to sell a variety of football shirts and merchandise and while there are some dodger sellers there is also a community of sellers who are well respected in the shirt community. You can find sellers who specialise in certain clubs, nations or eras so that you can follow the specific resellers that interest you.
Some great examples are Cult Kits, NI Classic Shirts & EH Retro Kits and they are all a great places to start if you are looking for a new place to buy!
If you are unsure if the football shirt is authentic have a look at our blog on ‘how to know if a football shirt is fake‘ for a few tips!
If you are an avid football shirt collector or even someone who has recently purchased their first shirt we would love to know! Send us a picture on twitter or tag us in your instagram posts.
Happy Shirt hunting!
