Graeme Stokes has bought 120 vintage Brighton shirts dating back to the early 1990s, turning one shop haul into a neat record of Brighton's climb from a smaller club to a Premier League side. One of the rarest items is a dark blue shirt with Palookaville emblazoned across it, and a training top with the initials GP is believed to have been worn by former manager Gus Poyet.
The Palookaville shirt and the GP top
Stokes, who runs Global Sports Collectibles in Brighton, said the shirts carry more than nostalgia. “I believe a shirt tells a story,” he told the BBC, and the Palookaville strip is the clearest example in the collection.
“It tells the story of a local person helping them out when they were a lot smaller club than they are today,” Stokes said. He also pointed out that Brighton were a much smaller club back then, so there were not as many shirts made.
The Red Nose Day shirt from 2007 adds another layer. The EFL refused permission for the charity sponsor, so those shirts were never worn and later became collectors' items.
Why Brighton shirts are prized now
Brighton's current status makes the old shirts stand out even more. The club are third in the Premier League, have 13 points from 6 league matches and a goal difference of +13.
That is a very different setting from the early 1990s shirts in Stokes's shop. The market value comes from scarcity as much as sentiment, because fewer shirts were produced when Brighton were operating on a much smaller scale.
Stokes also said: “Just last week a lady came in and bought an old Brighton shirt for her grandson, and she got talking and said her husband played for Brighton in the '60s.” The shop is not only selling memorabilia, it is linking modern buyers with older club memories.
The haul is likely to keep drawing interest while Brighton remain near the top of the league table, and the shirts themselves now sit in the same conversation as the club's rise.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 1 outlet. How we work →
