Uniwatch.com received some pictures from a reader who found a red Phillies City Connect jersey for sale on Facebook Marketplace, including retail tags and Nike, MLB, and Phillies insignias. Reader wrote this via email, in part:

I write to you with a handful of images from a Facebook Marketplace posting of a red version of the Phillies City Connect jersey. Unfortunately, it had been sold by the time I reached out. The seller stated he purchased it at a Flea Market.

This jersey has all of the Nike tags and City Connect Easter Eggs, such as the Philly skyline neckline, bell logo above the Nike patch, etc. All other aspects of the jersey seem to match the blue version.

If this is what they were supposed to be, they are so much better than the blue and yellow version the Phillies are wearing at home every Friday. I’ll commend Nike for trying a different color scheme, but they had it right when they designed the red prototype with the yellow nameplate. It still looks like a beer league softball jersey, but at least it fits more with the history of the Phils and the city. I’ve always said where Nike went wrong was designing the jersey after the Philadelphia city flag. No one in this city cares about the flag. Half the people buying the jersey from Delco or South Jersey don’t care about the flag or could even tell you what the city flag looks like.

The guys over at UniWatch believe this is real:

This is so bizarre! It doesn’t seem like a prototype (those generally wouldn’t have Nike price tagging), but seems destined for retail sale. Unfortunately, the sleeve patch isn’t completely readable — which would make it much easier to tell if the jersey was a fake. But even if it were a knock-off, why would it be in red? The knockoffs didn’t start to appear until the first Philly blue CC was leaked, so those were always all in blue.

Mike says the jersey contains all the telltale signs of a legit retail jersey. But again, what possible reason could there be for a retail jersey in red?

If it is real there is no doubt in my mind it was purchased at the Q-Mart. Those rednecks up 309 have everything. You can buy a new laptop, Nintendo 64, every baseball card that’s ever existed, some Louis Vuitton, an oriental rug, moonshine brewed out of someone’s bathtub, play Big Buck Hunter, purchase a deerskin leather satchel, and find the best sticky buns known to man all in one warehouse. It was the perfect place to pass the time in between travel baseball tournament games.