Subbuteo teams have been around for over 70 years now.
The players have graced living rooms and dining tables for decades and throughout that history there has been one constant – children have gleefully painted over teams to convert them into their desired kit.
It’s all part of the joy of Subbuteo as a child but it does mean collectors often have to try to restore painted teams to their former glory.
Adrian Hollands recently bought a rare Paris St Germain lightweight team on Facebook Marketplace but there was one big issue – the kit had been painted over.
It was a sad sight for such a lovely team but amazingly Adrian has managed to completely restore them. I thought that was well worth a share and he kindly shared his tips on restoring teams that have been painted. Hopefully it helps some of you out.
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“I saw the team for sale on Marketplace included in an early 90’s boxset and thought ey up….there’s something surprising there.
“I thought I’m having that so a tenner later it was mine. Once I had the team in my hand I noticed there was something hidden under the horrendous paint job – presumably the previous owner was a Leeds fan.”
“After asking advice on various forums, sunlight and hydrogen peroxide was one of the methods mentioned, but as there’s been no sunlight for months and I couldn’t wait I’d remembered somebody mentioned WD40 a few months back so I dropped one in an egg cup full to see if it destroyed it or not. Much to my surprise it didn’t and I noticed bits of paint dropping off so thought I’d fill a Tupperware box up with water and a very generous amount of WD40 and drop the whole team in overnight.
“Lunchtime the following day I got them out one by one and carefully wiped them down with a cloth and the majority of the paint came off. The bits that didn’t and the hard to reach bits I decided that instead of using a craft knife and potentially scraping the original paint off I’d use a wooden kebab skewer and give it a bit of elbow grease and chip away with the pointy end and hey ho here you have the finished article! There were still bits of white paint however that I couldn’t manage to remove in the folds of the shorts and arse cracks so I just touched them up with a light blue sharpie.”
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