This is a follow-up to my previous post about using the jock tag, NBA logo and collar label to determine the exact year that Champion released a particular jersey. Often times, you can pinpoint the year a jersey was produced by obvious aesthetic traits like the color, graphics/logo, and font of the player name. Or you can use simple logic based on team rosters and players that might have only played for a particular team for one season. But there are teams like the Bulls that didn’t change their jerseys the entire time that Champion produced replica jerseys from

In all of the galleries that I post, if you click on a particular jersey for an enlarged view, you’ll see that I provide the season that particular style of jersey was first issued for each player. But when you are collecting, if you want to more accurately pinpoint which year a jersey was issued, you can look at the tags and labels to determine the season that Champion issued a particular jersey. For instance, Champion produced thousands of Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jerseys from 1991-1992 through 1997-1998. For a collector, it might be important to have a first-issue or early issue Jordan road jersey. But since they basically all look the same, how can you tell which year a particular Jordan jersey actually came off of Champion’s production line? This post will tell you what to look for when trying to date a particular jersey that you otherwise can’t date by obvious traits like the style/color, team logo/graphics, player font, etc. It will show you the various labels and tags used by Champion over the years that will allow you to dive a bit deeper when collecting. This post only deals with REPLICA jerseys. I’ll address Authentic (sewn) jerseys in a future post. And of course, this isn’t an exact science…there are variations to what I layout below and I’ll be sure to address some of those.

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