According to this article, when the Patriots lost to the Giants, the NFL donated pre-printed Patriots championship apparel to people in third-world countries.

I bet somebody still kept a few.

Kept a few why?

They preprint all of them, and if they turn out a loss, they go on the Goodwill pile. I saw a playoff game in the late 90s when the Phillies missed their chance to go to the series, and guys were hawking "World Series Champs" Phillies shirts. For $2.00, at the end of the game. and nobody bought - not even ironically.

I like to think a kid who gets a loser hat will one day come to the U.S. for college or something and then insist the Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2008.

Kept a few why?

For the weird value. Same reason people might've kept that Dewey Defeats Truman newspaper.

Well...I have never again seen any of those Philly T-shirts, even for entertainment value.

Yes, there's a market for stuff like that. I have heard that they try to keep a tight lock on the merch to keep it from leaking out into the market, because, yeah, collector's item.

There's a similar thing with World Series tickets for games that never get played. If you've got tix for game 6 and the Cards take the Series in 5, you don't get your money refunded unless you mail the tickets back to the distributor so they can be destroyed. They figure if you want a rare collector's item for a championship game that was never played, you gotta pay.

I'm right now wondering what an '86 "Red Sox World Champions" t-shirt would go for. I'm guessing easily hundreds, probably thousands.

If there are any I can't find them on a web search.