Presumably a tad more than the “couple of thousand” with which local Carlton collector Simon Davis parted to secure what he believes to be the iconic garment.
“I bought the Barassi guernsey about 12 months ago on eBay and it’s turned out a pretty good investment,” Simon said recently.
The guernsey has apparently made its way back from across the Nullabor, having been kept in cotton wool in Perth for almost 50 years.
“My understanding is that the jumper was originally donated to the WAFL for auction, then eventually on-sold through various shops to people,” Simon said.
Simon Davis' No.31 guernsey
“It ended up with a North Melbourne supporter who loved Ron Barassi but thought the jumper should be owned by a Carlton person, and I was able to negotiate a price.
“I took a punt on it being Ron’s jumper because there was no letter of authentication from him. But it looked like a 1960s jumper, carried the handmade logo on the front, the No.31 on the back and could only have been made for a Carlton player.
“I figured that even if it wasn’t Ron’s jumper (perhaps Garry Crane who handed the No.31 to Barassi for the No.6) then it was still a 1960s Carlton jumper.”
On receipt of the item, Simon set about establishing whether the guernsey was in fact the one worn by “Barass” following his famous move from Melbourne to Carlton.
And he says he’s been left in no doubt.
“I managed to find a couple of photographs of Ron wearing the jumper - one from a magazine and another in an old MSD advertisement from 1965 - and it was easy to verify because of the slightly missewn emblem on the front,” Simon said.
Noted collectibles authority Rick Milne, who rates John Coleman’s No.10 as football’s most coveted, said that football guernseys were the most difficult items to verify in terms of authenticity and, as was the case with Winmar’s guernsey, had to be treated with caution.
He said that while it was difficult to pass judgment on the Barassi guernsey without having seen the item, “what I will say if it’s not the real thing it’s going to sell for about 800 bucks”.
“But if it’s ‘the real McCoy’ it’d be closer to four grand, remembering it wouldn’t have been the only one players of Ron’s era ever wore,” he said.
