Football shirt fanatic turns hobby into business

"It was either buy a bigger house or open a shop, so we went for the cheapest option."

That was the dilemma that Shaun Owen, a Shrewsbury Town fan with a passion for retro football shirts, faced when his collection started getting out of hand.

After buying retro shirts for about 20 years he opened a shop, The 12th Man, stocking his hoard in the Parade shopping centre in Shrewsbury on Thursday.

"It's just going to be a great opportunity to sit down and talk about football with everybody all day," he laughed.

He said the hardest part about the job was sourcing the shirts in the first place.

"As soon as you see something that is a little bit off the beaten track which you haven't seen before, you've got to buy it," he said.

"The whole idea is, I want people to come in here and obviously buy stuff… but also see it as almost an art gallery."

"Football shirts have a certain beauty," he added.

Mr Owen gets them from all around the world, and said the job is "constantly buying".

"I've had some from Mexico, some from Italy, some from Tunisia, I buy a lot from Northern Ireland, Scandinavia, everywhere," he said.

"You build up a list of contacts who have some good stuff, and then you check in with them every two or three weeks to see what they've got new."

Another part of the job is sniffing out fakes.

"A lot of it is to do with product tags which you can source back," he told the BBC.

"For the stuff later than the mid-90s it's very much touch it, feel it, the labels in the back… stitching.

"I'm that nerdy, now I can tell."

Mr Owen hopes to launch a website for the shop in the new year.

At the top of his wish list is a Club America shirt from the 90s.

"That's my personal holy grail," he said.

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