Steelers Game-used Memorabilia At Chantilly Show

[G1X]

I never miss the Chantilly Show at Dulles Expo Center in Northern Virginia. There are 3 shows a year, and I enjoy roaming the room even though there is rarely much game-used items to be found. This past weekend was a different story. To my great surprise, the first booth inside in the door was Steelers Authentics. For those of you not familiar with them, they are the Steelers in-house game-used store.

I was like a kid in a candy store as there was a large selection of game-used jerseys and helmets from this past season along with some vintage durene jerseys from the 1960s. They had both home and road of the "Batman" style worn in 1966 and '67, several early 1960s white road jerseys that are one of my all-time favorite NFL jerseys, and one or two circa early '90s durenes. All of the durene jerseys were priced well beyond my budget, but it was still fun and educational to see them in person. The 2016 jerseys and helmets, on the other hand, were more reasonably priced.

I spent a lot of time talking with Ron Curtis (store manager) and Sam Nicklow, and it was a lot of fun going through the racks of jerseys and checking out the helmets. I ended up grabbing a home and road jersey of Chris Hubbard who played at my alma mater, UAB.

Below are photos of the early-1960s white durene style mentioned above. They wore this style for 4 years from 1962 through 1965. What I found very interesting and educational is the 3 different styles of Rawlings tags used over such a short time period. Of special interest to me is the tagging on the #72 jersey. I have an old durene jersey with this particular tag style (note that the faded-out size tag is an elastic type material) and have never been able to properly date it. This helped solve that riddle.

Having the opportunity to check out the Steelers gear was well worth the price of admission to the show.

Mark Hayne
gixc@verizon.net