Original ‘This Is Anfield’ sign sells for £115,000 at auction

The original ‘This Is Anfield’ sign from Liverpool’s stadium tunnel has sold at auction for £115,000, according to reporting by BBC News. Auctioneer Budds had placed a £15,000 guide price on the piece, meaning the final figure was almost eight times the estimate. The identity of the buyer was not disclosed.

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The wording has long occupied a prominent place above the route players take from the dressing rooms to the Anfield pitch. Liverpool players have traditionally touched the sign as they pass beneath it before matches. Budds said the idea was initially proposed by a groundsman to club secretary Peter Robinson, before manager Bill Shankly selected the more imposing wording in 1972.

The original was removed during the 1970s, but it had remained at the stadium for Liverpool’s first two European Cup triumphs in 1977 and 1978. The auction house said Liverpool players Alan Hansen, Kenny Dalglish and Frank McGarvey were photographed with the sign after joining the club between 1977 and 1979.

Budds said former Liverpool player and later manager Roy Evans gave the sign to Ronald Wilson, who had been a member of the club’s boys’ team. Wilson’s family displayed it at the Rutland Hotel in Douglas on the Isle of Man for more than two decades, from 1979 until 2000. It later passed to Wilson’s children.

After leaving the hotel, the sign was displayed in the office of Wilson’s son. It remained there until his retirement in early 2026, after which it was offered for sale. That chain of custody moved the object from Liverpool’s tunnel to a family-run hotel and then a private workplace before its appearance at auction.

Shankly’s choice of words was intended both to remind Liverpool’s players of the club they represented and to affect visiting teams as they entered the stadium, BBC News reported. The sign’s £115,000 sale price demonstrates the demand attached to a physical piece of Liverpool history, though Budds did not reveal where it will be displayed next or whether the buyer plans to make it publicly accessible.