Rare Bobby Moore shirt that cost lucky West Ham fan just £1.25 sells for eye-watering sum

A "tatty" Bobby Moore shirt bought off West Ham's groundsman for £1.25 over half a century ago has sold at auction for £14,400.

Peter Fitzgerald’s brother returned home with the Hammers top after paying Upton Park groundsman Stan Botham half a crown for it. The delighted 12-year-old was gifted the shirt and played football in the oversized claret and blue top with Moore's number six on the back.

He eventually put the sought-after top away for safekeeping and decided to sell it 57 years later to help his son get on the property ladder. Retired oil refinery worker Peter was stunned when the shirt was sold at Essex-based Stacey’s Auctioneers for £14,400 last week.

The 69-year-old admitted he felt “mixed emotions” after selling the top he had owned since he was a schoolboy.

“From the age of four or five I have followed West Ham and now my three sons do as well,” said Peter. “I would have liked to have passed it down to one of them but the dilemma was who could I have chosen.”

Unlike today's pampered millionaire players, footballers in the 1960s were given just one shirt to last them a whole season. Hammers groundsman Stan passed on players’ shirts to fans after they were too worn-out to be used in matches.

Peter, who grew up in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, but now lives in Norfolk, said he was delighted when his brother gifted him the top.

“I remember he came home one afternoon from school with Bobby Moore and John Bond’s shirts,” he said. “He asked me which one I wanted and I said Bobby Moore’s. Back then people didn't put shirts in frames or sell them.

“So I would play football in it and hope it would make me play like Bobby Moore.

“I went to my first West Ham game when I was five years old and I can remember watching him play.” During the sixties all boys played football in the street, and I used to wear the shirt often.”

Moore, the England 1966 World Cup winning captain, played over 600 games for West Ham between 1958 and 1974.

His number six shirt number was retired by West Ham in 2008. He died aged 51 in 1993. Dave Alexander, from Stacey’s Auctioneers, said: “Bobby Moore, alongside Pele and George Best, were icons of the era.

“They are still recognised as such today. This shirt is a great piece of footballing history and as a West Ham fan it was a privilege to handle it.”

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