The Mario away shirt is one of the holy grails for collectors, but dig deeper and not all is what it seems
By Emmet Gates for The Gentleman Ultra
During the explosion of the vintage football shirt scene over the last decade, certain shirts have emerged as holy grails: the Arsenal “bruised banana shirt” of 1991-93, the away shirt USA wore at their World Cup in 1994, the home shirt in which the Netherlands won Euro 88, West Germany’s home entry for Italia 90, and pretty much any Napoli shirt from the Diego Maradona era.
And then there is the Fiorentina 1997-98 away shirt with Super Mario on the front. In recent years, this shirt has attained almost mythical status among collectors. Pictures of the shirt, complete with the face of that iconic Italian plumber just below the Nintendo logo, have been circulating around the nether regions of the internet for years.