I recently came into a great lot of Reading shirts, some crackers in there, 80's, 90's, 00's. Some very rare shirts.
One of them in particular though is a bit of a mystery. It appears to be the original 1981 home shirt. However, it has both a branded logo and tag of OSCA, a football shirt manufacturer from the 80's. (See pics below)
The Reading 1981 to 1983 home & away shirts officially had no brand at all. A manufacturer of course but no brand. The original owner has no doubt he bought it in the club shop, even describing what it was like back then. Every other shirt in the collection there is no doubt about, many of them also from the 80's.
I've checked with a couple of big shirt collectors, one of Reading match worn shirts specifically who says he has seen one other before, he also said that the embroidered club crest is bang on exactly the same as even his match worn 1981 home player shirt. He has no doubt it's legit but can't explain why the OSCA logo & tags appear on the shirt but as I said, he says he's seen one other before, meaning the shirt I have is not the only one.
The other collector I contacted is a huge collector of UK shirts from the 70's, 80', 90's. He even wrote a book about collecting shirts called "The Shirt Hunter". He's never seen one before but also says it's definitely legit. OSCA was a manufacturer for lower league clubs from 1980 to 1987, almost exclusively for London clubs. The badge & tags match OSCA shirts from the time.
He also said that it was a bit like the wild west in the 70's, 80's especially for lower league clubs and he's aware that small batches and one of shirts exist for quite a few clubs, so perhaps that seems to be the case here.
The most reasonable explanation I can come up with is that perhaps Reading in the summer of 81 produced a very small batch of shirts with OSCA with the option of then going with them for mass production. After the small batch was made for whatever reason perhaps price decided not to go with them.
Then since every bit of money was important back then decided to sell the shirts in the club shop first come, first serve, to recoup as much money as possible, maybe even make some profit off them. They may have given some of the shirts away as well. After that when they were mass produced for the following seasons they were unbranded.
If anyone knows of any others, has seen one, can remember them, even has one themselves, let me know. Programmes from the beginning of 1981 may have photos in them with fans wearing them or even promotional shots of people wearing them. I can't even find a single pic anywhere on the internet of another 1981 fan replica home shirt (branded or not). The only pics out there are of players wearing the shirts in team photos and from the games themselves.
Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You
