When TV star Rob McIlhenney gambled on Welsh minor league football team Wrexham AFC in 2020 with fellow actor Ryan Reynolds, the self-confessed football newbie wanted to look like it. What better way than to find a replica t-shirt from the 1970s worn by the ‘Wrexham Lager’ sponsor?
McElhenney first began a fruitless search of the horse racing grounds for any leftover food, but left empty-handed.
Wrexham AFC manager Sean Harvey asked: “Why would they send them away or give them to family and friends?” Isn’t it valuable?
“And he said: ‘No, they weren’t valuable.’ “They were actually representing unsold merchandise at a certain point in time, which wasn’t great for the club, in fact, it was unsustainable,” McIlhenny said. luck.
The Wrexham co-owner will likely curse those decisions now. His investment in Wrexham AFC and an Emmy Award-winning documentary series about the club meant he would likely have been sitting on a new gold mine of worn-out shirts if they stuck around.
Instead, McIlhenny found his dream shirt online through UK retailer Classic Football Shirts.
Little did he know at the time, but this was the purchase – one of a ‘collection’ of vintage Wrexham shirts It’s always sunny in Philadelphia One of the co-creators will buy out in the following years – which will lead to a greater investment in the company.
McElhenney was announced in September as a strategic investor in Classic Football Shirts, a Manchester-based company that resells old shirts. His group More Better Ventures has been selected as a strategic backer along with former USWNT player Alex Morgan and Wasserman Ventures.
Retro football shirts have become a growth market in recent years, penetrating the traditional demographics of football fans and the wider zeitgeist as a fashion statement. It’s something McIlhenney noticed when he tried on a match-worn Diego Maradona shirt from his time at Italian club Napoli.
“The set itself is very beautiful and well made,” McIlhenny said. luck. “Back in the day, they would make these hand-knit sweaters that these guys wear.
“Depending on the fit, it’s not just an expression of fandom, it’s also part of a fashion statement.”
More importantly, classic jerseys have become prized possessions in the booming alternative investment market. Having lost his classic Wrexham jersey, McElhenney is not ready to let the opportunity slip away from him again.
Wrexham takeover complete!#WxmAFC pic.twitter.com/cpM0TbsynF
– Classic football shirts (@classicshirts) November 16, 2020
McElhenney’s latest investment
A quick look at the Classic Football Shirts website shows that the most expensive shirts for sale are old Barcelona shirts with Lionel Messi’s name on the back. Shirts bearing Messi’s original number 19 routinely sell for hundreds of pounds.
This reporter, who has a tiny 2005 Messi 19 shirt somewhere in his childhood wardrobe, along with an old Wayne Rooney Manchester United shirt from the same year and a replica of Ronaldo’s 2002 World Cup-winning shirt in Brazil, Calling it a “football classic,” Shirts CEO and co-founder Doug Bierton asked if they would be given a valuable asset on his platform.
“They’re classics that we’ll get out the door day after day,” Burton says of the selection, dashing this reporter’s dream of a quick payday. He adds that since they are of a small size, their resale value is negatively affected.
Instead, there is a fine art in determining which football shirt is most likely to grow in value, with buyers taking into account the design, the success of the team wearing that shirt, the player’s name on the back, and any famous backstory that may remain in the team’s archives.
Many people only need one of these qualities, Burton says, citing Nigeria’s group that participated in the 2018 World Cup finals. Nigeria did not make it out of the group stage of that tournament, but it flew off the shelves because it was considered innovative.
Burton says the Goldilocks shirt will be a replica of the Netherlands’ 1988 European Football Championship shirt. The zig-zag orange design is iconic in fashion circles and represents the Netherlands’ only major win in a tournament marked by historic Dutch moments, including Marco van Basten’s volley in the match. final against the Soviet Union. It can sell for over £1,000.
Bongaarts/Getty Images
“All the shirts are on that journey. They all start life at £50 or £60, and then that’s how long it takes them to get there; that’s what it’s all about,” Burton says.
Limited-edition kits, including Serie A club Juventus’ collaboration with Alice, are good bets for investable shirts from recent seasons.
Classic football shirt works
Classic Football Shirts revenue grew by more than 25% to £24.4m in 2023 and made a profit of £4.5m. Historically, Burton and his co-founder Matthew Dell have reinvested their profits into purchasing more shirts.
Now, the company plans to expand into the United States — its fastest-growing market — by launching stores in New York, Los Angeles and Miami before the 2026 World Cup. That’s where McElhenney and his fellow investors come in.
Through his better projects, McElhenney turned his Wrexham ownership into a critically acclaimed series, Welcome to Wrexhamwhich is streaming on Disney+. McElhenney was particularly intrigued by the potential for similar storytelling offered by classic T-shirts.
“It’s not just a piece of merchandise or a consumer good or a consumer product. It’s a storytelling tool,” McElhenney says.
“It’s something that when you see it, you get goosebumps, you feel something, you have an emotional connection to that product. It’s not because of the thread, it’s not because of the process of making it. It’s simply because of what this collection represents to you emotionally, it takes you back to a place in time that was special to you.” This will always speak to you.
The jerseys, in particular, hold a special place in McIlhenny’s heart. Throughout the interview, he also name-checked the apparel of his other sports association, the NFL franchise Philadelphia Eagles.
The actor says the only operational control he and Reynolds have over their club is the design of Wrexham’s football kits. The duo designed this season’s Wrexham away kit based on inspiration from Manchester United’s loose-fitting shirt of the 1990s after watching the ‘Beckham’ documentary on Netflix.
Beyond football shirts
Bank of America says investments like wine, sneakers and jewelry are gaining traction among Gen Z as an alternative to traditional stocks and bonds. Sneakers in particular have developed a lucrative merchandising market of their own amid a sea of limited editions championed by musicians and social media personalities.
Indeed, McElhenney said luck His boldest fashion statement was his regular wearing of Air Jordan sneakers, which his family lacked the discretionary income to buy for him when he was growing up.
The financial success of Classic Football Shirts in recent years suggests that Classic Jerseys could follow sneakers as a major alternative investment.
Burton says buyers who hold onto shirts for 10 years are likely to have assets worth much more than when they were new, something he hopes he can do with his company.
“If we had kept all the shirts we had, they would be worth a lot more now than they were then, but the business is selling shirts.”