Andy Reid: ‘These Lombardies are floating around.’ How to get your own Super Bowl trophy

People freaked out over the weekend when they thought Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce spiked the precious Lombardi Trophy at his NFL Draft concert, Kelce Jam. Even the folks on stage with him ran after it when the big silver trophy hit the floor.

Can you blame them? The dang thing looked so real.

“By the way, very incredible lifelike replica,” NFL Network host Rich Eisen told Andy Reid on Monday after the Chiefs coach verified that Kelce had not, in fact, tortured the sterling silver trophy the Chiefs won in February.

“Yeah, it wasn’t the Tiffany one though,” Reid said. “It was tin but not probably the same grade as the Tiffany one.”

“They make those,” Reid said of the replicas. “They’re out there. Patrick (Mahomes) gave one away on our parade. So I mean, these Lombardis are floating around, man.”

Literally, floating around. Two years ago the Sunday NFL Countdown crew tossed a replica into the East River in New York City to see if it would float. It bobbed like a rubber ducky.

You don’t have to win a Super Bowl to own your own Lombardi. Replicas are easy to find from online retailers and trophy makers. Football fans scoop them up after their teams win. They’re given as prizes in fantasy football leagues. The NFL uses them as props.

Even a fake Lombardi holds mystique. They’re so … shiny.

“I got to see and hold a Vince Lombardi trophy even though it’s a replica I felt like my childhood hero,” a fan of quarterback Kurt Warner tweeted last month.

A search for Lombardi replicas on Amazon this week turned up 101 offerings including a 14-inch chrome fake “made for fantasy football champions” that costs $65.

The nearly 100 replica offerings on eBay include a $40 mini version of the trophy the Miami Dolphins won in 1972 and a $1,500 Oakland Raiders Lombardi.

A replica of the trophy Kansas City won for Super Bowl LIV in 2020, which sells for $449 on copytrophy.com, was out of stock on Thursday.

Someone on eBay has sold nearly two dozen 15-inch resin replicas of the trophy the Chiefs won this year. They cost $85 each.

Trophypartner.com is selling a Chiefs trophy replica for $110. It is chrome and has a nameplate that can be engraved “for an ultimate Kansas City Chiefs fan” with the regular and postseason game stats for the team’s three Super Bowl winning seasons. It comes in three sizes; at 18 inches the largest is nearly as tall as the real thing.

Depending on their size, detailing and what they’re made of — chrome? resin? — faux Lombardis can cost anywhere from $20 for a kid-sized version to $2,000 and more for a realistic, full-size faux.

A hardcore fan shopping for a fake they wouldn’t be embarrassed to display in the “man cave” should expect to shop in that sweet spot north of $400, $500 for one that doesn’t look like a toy.

Want one with an autograph? Break out the Benjamins. A replica trophy with Tom Brady’s Hancock will cost at least $10,000.

Authenticsig.com is taking pre-orders for a “Kansas City Chiefs Patrick Mahomes autographed full size, high quality replica Super Bowl LVII Lombardi trophy … the signing date is TBD.”

The price: $2,300.

(Shopping tip: Do your homework before buying from any outlet.)

Lombardi made by Tiffany

Replica Lombardis have been popping up more the last couple of football seasons. “Everybody in town’s got one, so it seems like,” Reid told Eisen.

Last year after veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford led the Los Angeles Rams to a Super Bowl victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, a shiny, silvery replica trophy was delivered to his home. His wife, Kelly Stafford, posted video of the unveiling on social media.

In January, Buffalo Bills linebacker Von Miller placed a replica Lombardi in the locker room to motivate his teammates.

But there is only one Lombardi Trophy created each season, and that goes to and stays with the winning team. Two of the Chiefs’ three Super Bowl trophies are displayed in the Hall of Honor at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. The newest one has not been installed yet, a team spokesman said.

The trophy is made by the famous jewelry company, Tiffany & Co. in New York City.

Tiffany has made every Lombardi Trophy handed out. Its size and design have not changed since the first NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle, sketched the original concept on a cocktail napkin for a Tiffany executive in 1966.

Tiffany makes many of the sports world’s championship trophies, including the ones for the World Series and NBA championship and the traditional silver cups given to the U.S. Open tennis champions.

It is a substantial bit of hardware, 22 inches tall, sterling silver and weighing nearly seven pounds with a brass plate in the base for added weight.

The real Lombardi takes four months to craft by hand in a Tiffany’s workshop on the East Coast.

The ootball at the top is the same size as a regulation NFL ball. Flat pieces of silver are spun on a lathe to create the two halves of the ball that are joined with seamless soldering. soddering.

The tall base the ball hovers over has concave sides; many fakes have straight sides.

Kelce is fond of those curves, which he dubbed the “Lombardi luge” after drinking beer off the trophy when the Chiefs beat the ‘49ers in Super Bowl LIV.

Replicas mostly don’t have the level of detailing Tiffany silversmiths create, such as the thin laces of a football.

Even so, from afar, it’s hard to tell the difference between real and fake, which is why people thought quarterback Patrick Mahomes had handed the real Lombardi Trophy to some anonymous Joe in the crowd at the championship parade in February.

It was, in fact, a fake that belonged to a Chiefs fan.

No respect from Tom Brady

There are just certain things you don’t do with the real Lombardi, like use it as a baseball bat and put a ding in it. (Tight end Rob Gronkowski did just that after the New England Patriots won the trophy in 2019. Shame.)

Two years ago when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers celebrated their Super Bowl win over the Chiefs, Brady made an eyebrow-raising pass seen ‘round the world.

During a celebratory boat parade on the Hillsborough River, the quarterback tossed the real Lombardi trophy from his boat, across the water, to tight end Cameron Brate in another boat.

As Brady prepared to heave it, a little girl yelled out: “Dad, no!”

Brate caught it.

“You got a little daring with the Lombardi Trophy,” talk show host James Corden told Brady later. “I mean, I know the outcome and my heart is still in my mouth when I see it. Was here any bit of you thinking what do I do if this goes in the water?”

“OK, first of all, I was not thinking at that moment. There was not a thought. It was, ‘This seems really fun to do,’” Brady told Corden.

“Not to mention, when you get your hands on one of those trophies, there are a lot of really sharp edges on the bottom. … I found out later, had that been an incomplete pass, that would have went down like 80 feet (in the river).”

And by the way, that was Brady’s 8-year-old daughter who tried to stop him.

At least Kelce knew better at his Kelce Jam at Azura Amphitheater in Bonner Springs.

“Travis does it, you know, he does it a little different,” Reid told Eisen. “He’s a great, great kid with a huge heart. I think you know that. And he loves to have fun, but he would never spike the real one.

“But give him a fake one and it’s going down, it looks like.”

The Star’s Pete Grathoff contributed to this report.