World

A very expensive black jersey

06:36 am on 10 October 2015

The jersey of All Blacks captain Dave Gallaher from the legendary 1905 Test between New Zealand and Wales has smashed the world-record price for a rugby shirt.

A hand-out picture of the record-breaking jersey. Photo: Supplied

It sold at auction in Cardiff to an anonymous British buyer for £180,000, or $NZD411,000, at the current exchange rate.

It had been expected to fetch $90,000 at most. The previous world record was $50,000.

Gallaher and Welsh captain Gwyn Nicholls swapped shirts after the historic match, and Nicholls later gave it to a worker at his Cardiff laundry business, whose family it remained in.

Gallaher died 12 years later, killed just before the first Battle of Passchendaele in in October 1917.