Brett Horton Collection at the Rouleur Classic

My wife will tell you I have "way too many cycle jerseys" (which is backed up by the fact I wrote a book about them!) and with all of the lovely jerseys that come in and out of the Prendas warehouse is it any wonder! I've never set out to have "a collection" of them but one man that truly does have a collection is Brett Horton who we met in person at the recent Rouleur Classic.

Mick and I first came across than name back in 2006 when Prendas had a fair number of cycling books for sale, that actually took up a section of our modest unit rather unimaginatively named "Book Corner".

In a world before Amazon's price-shagging was off the scale, we had a moderate amount of success every year with Velopress who released a brand new coffee table book in time for Christmas. Cycling's Golden Age was the first that we stocked from a series that eventually included books about Paris-Roubaix, the Spring Classics and a history of Campagnolo.

Some of the old retro wool team jerseys featured in CGA from the likes of Eddy Merckx always brought a smile to our face and we always wondered how Brett had amassed his fine collection - so it was a delight to meet him - especially as we have some common ground in knowing John Pierce through his vast collection of archive photographs.

Horton started his collection of cycling ephemera 25 years ago and he kindly brought along some of his most valuable jerseys worn Belgium’s Eddy Merckx for the expo in London.

Mick took some time to photograph some of them below - enjoy!

Eddy Merckx’s 1974 world champion jersey with Molteni-Campagnolo logos that he wore at Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 1975.

Eddy Merckx’s 1968 Faema six day jersey with world championship bands on the collars / cuffs.

My personal favourite: The 1977 Fiat team jersey.

A fabulous example of the Peugeot BP Michelin retro team jersey worn by Eddy Merckx in 1966–1967.

Eddy Merckx turned pro in 1965 with Rik van Looy's Solo-Superia team.

I had the task of diving in for a couple of autographs at the end of the session which Eddy seemed only too please to oblige with (I had been warned about him being a bit, well not so obliging).