Football Shirt Buying Guide: How to Spot a Fake in 2021

Football Shirt Buying Guide

Are you excited about your club’s new kit that has been recently launched? However, do you really know if the kit you’re planning to buy is the real deal? With so many choices out there, we’re here to guide you in making sure that you’re not wasting your hard-earned money and are continuing to be there for your club. we’re here to help you with football Shirt Buying Guide.

If you’re not completely aware of how you can spot fake football shirts, don’t worry because we are giving you complete access. So keep reading!

1. Assess its quality 

Most often, fake shirts may look like the real ones at first glance but they can never replicate true quality. Watch out for fabric quality, poor stitching, fit and sizing problems. 

Check the inside of the shirt, the stitching quality, especially around the neckline and the badge. You will easily notice whether it’s bad, most probably it is. 

Aside from that, you’ll also know when it’s counterfeit by seeing the kit manufacturer’s logos are printed onto the fabric with a fake. It’s one of the cheapest ways to do it, and counterfeiters love it. 

Also, you need to know that counterfeiters will always find ways to cut costs whenever or wherever they can, so pay attention to details because they will always lose to it and can never win. Football Shirt Buying Guide

2. Check the price (is it too cheap?) 

This is probably the most obvious giveaway of a fake – its price. If a newly released shirt is sold for less than half of its original price or credible sites, then it’s most likely a counterfeit. 

There are fake stores that usually have their entire shirts sold for the same prices, which is definitely weird for some reason. 

The current kit releases can never be marked-down and are commonly not reduced until the whole season finishes. 

Most of the time, season fakes are normally priced around £30, when they must be £60-£70. This is your largest clue when it comes to purchasing a classic football shirt. It’s better to wait for the official launch and buy from trusted retailers. 

3. Look for mistakes

It wouldn’t take hours or days to find the simple slip-ups that fakers often create. For instance, if you see a missing Nike ‘swoosh’ mark on a ‘real’ shirt, then it’s fake. Or if you’re a Liverpool fan, if you spot a tag saying it’s ‘home’, but it’s an away kit, you have a fake one there. 

Remember that it’s all in the detail. If it’s still difficult for you to spot a mistake, you may ask help from a friend or family member who are knowledgeable about the kits or you can google yourself the new releases to check how the kits should look and compare them to your purchase (back and front). 

3 Tips to Buy Perfect Promotional T-Shirts from the Market

4. Verify the product SKU 

Every football shirt or any item, in general, has its own assigned SKU (Stock keeping unit), which can be helpful to examine if a shirt is fake or not, particularly if you have received the item or it’s in your hands already. 

You might ask where the SKU is located, you can find it on the tag that comes with the shirt. The best way to ensure it’s the correct one is to search on Google together with the creator of the product. 

5. Inspect the swing tags 

If you don’t know what swing tags are, they are tags that are attached to the shirt which is an effective indicator of a fake. But it doesn’t mean that if there’s a swing tag it’s not genuine already.

Here’s a tip, check first the UPC sticker or barcode sticker on the tag. If you find none, then it’s a fake. The UPC sticker should be exactly a sticker and not something pre-printed and utilized across all the tags. Also, the UPC sticker must include all the wording connected to the product. If the text has generic words, it’s fake. 

Furthermore, a size sticker is a helpful guide for the law enforcement team, so go ahead and search for this if you want to know whether a shirt is fake or not. 

6. Check the care labels 

This is an easy one! Just check the care label for any numbers or marks that are written in biro or pen. Factories that produce counterfeit shirts are doing this as part of their counting method. Shirts that are 99.9% fake can be seen with pen marks and that’s a clear marker for you. 

7. See if the seams are straight

This is usually the problem that fake shirts have, they have very poor quality. For example, a fake shirt will have seams that are badly executed and you can see some threads sticking out. Seams are commonly not straight at all, or they have fabric stretching beside them. This is the result of having cheap types of machinery or employing untrained workers. 

This is the reason why it’s not surprising that fakes are sold for a cheaper price but producers would still make a profit out of it.  comment your thought on Football Shirt Buying Guide.