What shirts do I collect?
– All of the following shirt descriptions that I’m collecting are not supposed to be in a particular order. That means even though something is my top priority, it doesn’t mean that I’ll finish that part of the collection first before moving on to other priorities.
– The main focus of my collection is on the African shirts, with Madagascar shirts being my most sought after shirts! They’re extremely hard to come by, but after I went to Madagascar for a long trip around the whole island, I feel like it’s my second home, and I started feeling a lot of solidarity for Madagascar. They’re the team I root for mostly other than my home country, Denmark! My main goal is first of all to get the national shirt of every African country!
– Other shirts that I like in particular are the shirts from the smaller countries like Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, San Marino etc.
– Miscellaneous rare shirts like China, Estonia, North Korea, Suriname and so on.
– Eventually I’d like to collect all the FIFA shirts! The common shirts like Germany, France, England, Italy etc. would however be the last shirts!
– This last bit is somewhat of a new description of which shirts I collect. I’ve also talked a bit about this on the Dominica post. While I do have template shirts and shirts that are not really very special, the recent development of availability of previously rare shirts have forced me to sit down and consider where I want to go from here. While shirts on CFS or through Admiral are perfectly genuine, it feels weird and is quite boring to tick off exciting, small countries and territories off the list with a simple add-to-basket order. The shirts might be great and it’s also generally a good thing that a shirt is available, but as I’ve progressed with shirt collecting, what I’ve found fun is hunting down the shirt. Doing some research and talking to a lot of people before finally securing a shirt. People want to collect in different ways – which is good. People can make their own rules that work for them. To some, all that matters is getting to 211. They don’t care much what shirt they get or how they get it – they just want it added to the list. That’s perfectly fine, personally I would just find that really boring and to me that would make football shirt collecting simply be just about having enough money to spend, as loads of shirts are available on eBay and CFS. Through Admiral, it’s even possible to tick off most of the Caribbean with a single order. And previously, it has been possible to purchase almost all of the Oceania shirts on a single website. Because of this, I’ve come to terms with a conclusion that is to make those countries/territories a challenge even though they can easily be purchased on a website. That means trying to find a matchworn or a design that is not easily available or something like that. I won’t deny that I will be making a purchase on CFS in the future, a shirt may simply have too great of a design to ignore, or maybe I’m fine with not making certain countries/territories a challenge. But a territory like Montserrat or a country like Samoa? That deserves a bigger challenge than add-to-basket on CFS! I am not rushing to get all the FIFA shirts as quickly as possible, as nowadays that can be done very quickly. I don’t want a country’s shirt just for the sake of ticking off a country.
What are the “rules” for the collection?
– The shirts naturally have to be official, as in that they are the exact shirt that the national team plays in. Whether it’s replica or authentic doesn’t matter to me, but I would always get a replica if I have the choice, as I’d think they’re more suited for wearing casually. Replica doesn’t mean it’s not official or that it’s a fake, it just means that the shirt is not as tight fit as the actual shirts on the pitch, for instance. The difference is also explained here. So a replica shirt is still an official shirt!
– The shirts have to look cool, creative, special or perhaps even over the top. Preferably including some country-specific details. In short – no templates or plain and boring shirts. I have unfortunately already broken this “rule”, and it may be broken again if I get too tempted. In the early days of collecting I got some template shirts. Some shirts are simply so rare or hard to get that a template shirt is what I can get. But I aim for this to be a rule.
Best of Football Shirts 