LIONEL MESSI SHIRTS

Messi's earliest Barcelona shirts here carry #30, issued for the 2004-05 season when he was still breaking into the first team as a teenager, in both home and away versions. He moved to #19 for 2006-07 and 2007-08, then took over the #10 shirt from 2008-09 onward, the number that stayed with him through Barcelona's home, away and third kits all the way to a 2017-18 third shirt. A few pieces in the collection are still BNWT or BNIB, meaning they were never worn after leaving the factory. Every one of these is Nike, the only brand that made a Barcelona jersey during these years.

The Argentina shirts trace a parallel path. Messi wore #18 in the mid-2000s and #19 through the 2006-07 season, both Adidas home shirts from his early caps, before Argentina handed him the #10 shirt from 2010-11 onward. That number, in both home and away versions, is what most collectors search for, and it's the one that stayed with him for the rest of his international career.

The Barcelona run alone covers a wide spread of designs: a 2004-05 away shirt from his debut season, a 2011-12 home shirt still sealed BNIB, a 2012-13 away version, a 2013-14 third kit, and a 2017-18 third shirt from near the end of his time at the club. Stock runs from S to XL, mostly single pieces per size and season rather than duplicates, which is how a one of one shop ends up with forty-three shirts that rarely repeat exactly.

Every shirt here is either Nike or Adidas, split cleanly along club and country lines. Most of what's in stock sits across the 2000s and 2010s, the two decades that cover his rise at Barcelona through to the Argentina number 10 seasons, and overlap with team-mates from the same Barcelona sides, including the Ronaldinho shirts from a few years earlier. As with the rest of the catalogue, each shirt is an original from its own season, checked by hand, with its own photos and condition rating, and measured pit to pit and top to bottom rather than against a modern size label.