Jersey Grading Explained: From BNWT to Fair

Jersey grading is the bit collectors argue about most, and it's also the bit that decides whether you feel good about a purchase six months later. Two honest people can look at the exact same shirt and land on different grades. That's not the system failing you. That's just what grading is: a considered opinion, not a lab result.

Grading isn't a certificate, it's a call

A grade is shorthand. It tells you roughly what to expect before the shirt arrives, so you're not surprised by a small mark or a slightly loose seam. It doesn't replace looking at the actual thing. Think of it the way you'd think of a restaurant review: useful, honest when written properly, but never a guarantee that your exact meal will taste identical to the last one.

The scale that matters here runs in seven steps: BNWT, BNWOT, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Worn, and Fair. Every one of those words has a job to do, and the differences between neighbours are usually smaller than people expect.

Grading a jersey: the seven steps from BNWT to Fair

BNWT and BNWOT: the top of the scale

BNWT means Brand New With Tags — the shirt has never been worn, and the tags are still attached, proving it. This is as close to factory-fresh as a shirt gets. BNWOT is one small step down: Brand New Without Tags. The shirt is still unworn, but the tags are gone, so the seller can't prove it left the factory in that exact state. The garment might be identical. The proof just isn't as complete.

Excellent, Very Good, and Good: the working middle

Excellent means worn, but barely marked. No fading worth mentioning, no repairs, stitching tight throughout. Very Good drops down slightly: it might carry light bobbling, a touch of colour softening, maybe a tiny mark that doesn't distract from the shirt. Good is a shirt that's clearly been lived in — visible wear, maybe a small repair, fading that's noticeable rather than subtle. None of these are red flags. They're just honest descriptions of a shirt with history.

Worn and Fair: shirts with a story

Worn means the condition issues are obvious at a glance: fading, pilling, maybe a small hole or a repair that's been done with care rather than invisibly. Fair is the bottom of the scale — a shirt with real damage or wear that a buyer needs to know about before they commit. Fair doesn't mean unwearable or worthless. Plenty of Fair-graded shirts are still display-worthy, still historically interesting, still worth owning. It just means the condition needs saying out loud, not glossing over.

What the photos need to prove

A grade without evidence is just an assertion. Here's what a proper set of photos should show at each step:

• The tag itself, in focus, for anything claiming BNWT or BNWOT
• Both cuffs and the collar, where fabric wears first
• Any area described as marked, faded, or repaired — photographed close, not from across the room
• The full front and back in decent light, so colour and shape are honest

If a listing calls a shirt Excellent but only shows one flattering photo from a distance, that's worth a question before it's worth a purchase.

Where TKLFC sits in this

Every jersey listed goes through a manual inspection before it goes up — tags, fabric, stitching, era details — and all of it gets photographed, tags included. That inspection is what the grade and the authenticity guarantee both rest on. Some shirts also go through light hand restoration first: a careful clean, a seam re-stitched where it needed it. The guarantee covers the jersey itself, though — names, numbers, and sponsor patches on vintage shirts are usually added after the shirt left the factory, either by a previous owner or by TKLFC at a buyer's request, so printing isn't covered unless a listing says otherwise. Worth knowing before you assume a badge or a name is original just because the shirt is.

Auctions for original vintage jerseys are coming to TKLFC too — something very few vintage shirt shops offer at all. No launch date to give you yet, just something worth keeping an eye on if you collect seriously.

No two graders agree perfectly

Here's the honest part. Grading is a judgement call, and judgement calls have wobble built in. One person's Excellent is another person's Very Good. A shirt with a single faint mark near the hem might get marked down by a cautious grader and waved through by a generous one. Neither is lying. They're just applying the same scale with slightly different thresholds.

That means a grade is a strong starting point, not a finish line. It tells you what to expect in broad strokes. It won't tell you exactly how a specific mark will look to your eye, in your light, on your shelf. No grade — however carefully applied — replaces actually looking at the shirt and the photos that back it up.

The quick version

BNWT and BNWOT sit at the top, separated only by whether the tags survived. Excellent, Very Good, and Good describe a shirt in steadily more visible use. Worn and Fair are honest about damage rather than hiding it. None of the seven grades is a red flag on its own — they're just a shared language for describing condition, so you and a seller are talking about the same shirt in the same way. Learn the scale, check the photos against it, and grading stops being guesswork and starts being a genuinely useful tool.