I decided it would be an easier task to combine these into one page… The Special Service was a service where a shop could order in a minimum of 50 units of a specially designed/painted team… any kit you or a shop could dream off it would be done… examples maybe of a local team or even a school team may have won the local cup so a shop may order in some an example of this would be the St Austell’s team for example…. The Original Leaflet advertising the service had this to say on it “Team colours are often modified or changed these days. It is impossible to keep re-printing our colour references for every change in “strip”. To keep your selection up-to-date and meet local demands, we now offer this unique special service” So this Service was often used by shops to get the latest kit done or if a one off kit combo was used in say a fa cup final… An example of this would be the Everton Away Pictured below after Everton as the Normal Ref 47 didn’t quite cover Everton’s kit at the time alas A yellow only sock team was created…

Some are obvious Special orders others are less obvious and may have been done in larger numbers but just never added to the main catalogue…. SO this Page will be a combo of the two for ease my end…. A big example would be the New Southampton wrongly assumed to be Ref 350 by a lot of collectors when it isn’t it… So teams like that are on this page aswell…

Some big teams on here included some potentially one of ones… Now owned by Mark Skellon, These Teams Originally owned by Richard Pepper were ordered through the Special Service … His Club at the time was very big buyers of Product at the time and used to buy a lot of stuff! So a Special Customer deal was done where they could order a teams while not having to buy the minimum quota as per the Special Service rules… the caveat was they would have to Pay 3 times the amount per unit so instead of the roughly 75p a team each you looking at over £2 a team in the 70’s no wonder SSG agreed :)… SO what Mark Skellon has in his collection are potentially and I mena Potentially one of ones and far outstrip the famous Sambenedettese often referred as the rarest team… SO there were workarounds to the 50 minimum order…

Interestingly Richard Also got some Trial Figures done as well that never made to production…. SSG would send them painted figures (But not bases) to Richard he added bases to them… also sold now to Mark Skellon… I will do a seperate pages for them…

Also finally there are a few oddities that i have added from Mark’s Collection of a uncatalogued team (no clue as to what) and a quirk of all flicking gks too 🙂

So feast your eyes on some Special Service and Uncatalogued team/ uncatalogued team variation goodness

(Disclaimer… 98% of these are legit but to cover myself one or two maybe questionable so to cover myself im writing this disclaimer haha also one or two variants may be added to the catalogue officially at some point like the Hearts white strip as it is also reffered to as ref 27 at some point but was likely never was in the catalogues as such…)

There’s loads out there no doubt so send what you have in to add to this page 🙂

https://www.peter-upton.co.uk/subhw5.htm