Gordon Banks' 1966 World Cup medal and 'Save of the Century' shirt to fetch £500,000 at auction

Gordon Banks’ 1966 World Cup winners medal and the shirt he wore when he made the ‘Save of the Century’ against Pelé are expected to fetch a combined £500,000 or more when they go to auction on June 25 through Budds. Auctioneers estimate each item will sell for between £200,000 and £300,000, making the late goalkeeper’s memorabilia among the most valuable in English football history.

The auction date falls between England’s two group-stage fixtures at the 2026 World Cup, against Ghana and Panama. Both items had previously been sold by Banks himself before his death in 2019 and are now being offered again by their current anonymous owners.

The shirt in question was worn by Banks during England’s group game against Brazil at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico — the match in which he produced a one-handed reflex save from a Pelé header that has since been universally regarded as the greatest save ever made.

Football historian and Alf Ramsey biographer Grant Bage described the items as the “holy grail” of English football collecting. “Gordon Banks was one of the greatest goalkeepers the world has ever seen,” Bage said. “His 1966 World Cup winners medal is such a special piece of memorabilia and I’m not surprised its estimate is so high. I’m sure someone somewhere would pay £250,000 for it.”

Bage, who was 13 at the time of the 1970 tournament and remembers watching England’s quarter-final defeat to West Germany at home, added that Banks’ absence from that match — he was replaced by Peter Bonetti after falling ill — may have cost England a second World Cup. “With great respect to Peter Bonetti, we all knew that had Gordon Banks been in goal we would have stopped at least one of those three comeback goals,” he said.

The illness that kept Banks out of the West Germany quarter-final has long been the subject of speculation. Earlier this week, renewed claims emerged that Banks had been poisoned by the CIA ahead of that match, though no definitive evidence has been established.

Also included in the Budds auction is the shirt Peter Shilton wore when Diego Maradona scored his infamous ‘Hand of God’ goal at the 1986 World Cup — an item the Mirror previously reported on last year. Bage, whose biography of Sir Alf Ramsey, The Unseen Sir Alf, has just been released in paperback, said the 1970 tournament remains uniquely memorable. “That save is still regarded as the ‘Save of the Century’,” he said. “That jersey is special and, again, I’m sure there’s a buyer somewhere who would be happy to pay such a six-figure sum for it.”