With all the fakes on ebay nowadays its very difficult to distinguish whats authentic and whats not. Cheap fake football shirts from Asia are all over ebay and is killing the authentic market. I am writing this guide for ebay members who are interested in only authentic football shirts and dont want to be ripped off for a cheap fake football shirt. These fake shirts are made in Asia and then sold on to the rest of the world by people trying to make big profits. The shirts are very badly designed and stitched which usually tear up and is damaged after several washes. I am approached by these sellers nearly everyday who try and sell me fake shirts claiming they are authentic or Grade A football shirts. They say Grade A to make a fake shirt sound posh.. end of the day its a counterfeit.

So I advise you please stay away from knock offs!

Below is a list of what ebay members should look out for when purchasing football shirts on ebay. The points listed below are all present in official/authentic football shirts.

1. Authentic Football shirts all have barcoded hand tags. Fake football shirt hand tags look similar to the authentic tags but dont have the manufacturer barcode on the tags. Look out for the barcode on the hand tags. All authentic shirts have this!
2. All authentic shirts have a label with a serial number on it inside the shirt. This serial number is unique for each shirt and is not the same even its the identical team or size. The shirts will also have tags with washing instructions inside the shirt.
3. The easiest way to differentiate between sellers of fake shirts from the authentic sellers is that fake sellers only sell medium and xlarge sized shirts. These type of shirts are all over ebay. If you type in teams like Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool in the ebay search bar for example you will see that most of the sellers only sell these two sizes. Thats wierd you may ask? But the asian factories mostly manufacturer sizes medium and xlarge. The funny thing is ebay members are are able to sell these shirts for less then half the retail price and sometimes lower then what the UK manufacturers sell to their clients for. I have accounts with Nike, Adidas, Umbro etc and I can tell you that you will not be able to get a current season shirt from them for the prices these fake shirts are selling for.

Hope this guide helps keep the fake shirts off ebay. People are spending good money on ebay which should be spent on authentic shirts not the cheap fakes!

If you are not sure about what your buying, ask the seller for close pictures of the hand tags and also tags from inside the shirts. Examples of hand tags and serial numbers inside shirts are shown in the pictures above.

DONT BE A KNOCK OFF NIGEL!