Research On The Early History of Mitchell & Ness Jerseys, A Brief Read

48,091
28,085
Joined
Sep 4, 2006
So I complied some info on the early history of M&N jerseys for anyone who is interested.


As the story goes, a customer walked into the Peter Capolino's Philadelphia store with a beat-up old authentic mlb jersey to see if it could be repaired & this gave Pete the idea to produce throwback baseball jerseys.






at 1:55, Pete kind of tells the story & quickly shows a Pirates Bill Mazeroski jersey & then very quickly references a St. Louis Brown's jersey but happens to actually show the incorrect model...The correct model is the 1949 St. Louis Brown's Roy Sievers jersey...this is that jersey...one of the very 1st M&N jerseys ever produced! (circa 1986)...now a collector's item in it's own right...


View media item 557861View media item 557862
View media item 557901
it is referenced here...

View media item 557865
As the story continues, M&N gets featured in a summer 1987 Sports Illusrated issue...(again the Sievers jersey is mentioned)


View media item 557866View media item 557868

View media item 557867
...and the rest is history


Here is an August 1987 M&N catalog which was put out following the SI piece...(cheap, huh?)

View media item 557875View media item 557874View media item 557876


Now here is a timeline of M&N collar & jock tags from first to present (These are the baseball throwback tags here)
Also, please note, some of the first few batches of M&N came with varying tags or no tags at all (perhaps they would run out or not put them on for certain reasons like autograph signing allocation.)


View media item 557883View media item 557884View media item 557885View media item 557886View media item 557887View media item 557888View media item 557889View media item 557890
(Jock tags showed up in gen 2 M&N jerseys)
View media item 557892cats started bitin'
View media item 557893View media item 557894View media item 557895View media item 557896View media item 557897

Hope this gives a good read for those interested in stuff like this. Now a lot of customers know the story but just like I enjoy seeing 'kick pics' here on NT, I also like visual evidence when it comes to other things as well - so maybe this might provide some of that here for jerseys.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for this, I'm always interested in knowing the backstory of brands, since I was barely starting grade school when M&N started doing their baseball flannels and wasn't exactly at an income level where I could comfortably afford to buy jerseys on my own until after they were sold to adidas, this is really interesting to read.

I'd love to know how they ended up snagging the NFL license when Tiedman imploded in the early 90s.
 
I've always wondered if it was true about the idea that Jay-Z killed the jersey era with his song "What more can I say" :lol:
 
I've always wondered if it was true about the idea that Jay-Z killed the jersey era with his song "What more can I say" :lol:


not entirely at least - didn't kill the demand
as there were a lot of folks into throwback jerseys that never heard that song or never even heard of that song

some folks were even into throwbacks before hip-hop really got into it - if you can imagine that!
 
not entirely at least - didn't kill the demand
as there were a lot of folks into throwback jerseys that never heard that song or never even heard of that song

some folks were even into throwbacks before hip-hop really got into it - if you can imagine that!

I always imagined it just weeded out the trend followers. Those of us who were already into jerseys like myself still rock 'em.
 
Back
Top Bottom