A fan found a vintage Eagles jacket at the parade. The note taped inside kicked off a new tradition.
Amy Rannabargar, 36, spotted an Eagles Starter jacket hanging on a pole. A note inside began, “If found, do not return. This jacket belongs to you!”
As the Eagles’ Super Bowl parade speeches came to an end in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, fireworks erupted and the thousands of fans began to disperse. As many stumbled across the lawn area at the intersection of Spring Garden Street and Ben Franklin Parkway, 36-year-old Amy Rannabargar spotted something strange.
Through all the trash piled on the ground from the festivities, Rannabargar saw a vintage kelly green Starter jacket hanging from a light post. Because of how the jacket was positioned, she noticed something else. There was a note attached to the inside of the jacket.
“As I was leaving, that’s when I spotted the jacket,” Rannabargar said. “I didn’t have to climb anything, it was just hanging there. As I kind of walked by, I noticed something attached to it. So I went closer and read it and I really liked the note. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing!’ It was really the note that made me walk over. That note caught my eye — I honestly probably would have just left it if I didn’t see that.”
The note is what turns this story from “fan finds trash” to “fan finds a Super Bowl heirloom.”
» READ MORE: Carson Wentz wishes he could trade places with Nick Foles for one very specific day
Rannabargar looked closer, and the note read: “If found, do not return. This jacket belongs to you! I found this jacket on the night of the Super Bowl in 2018 and it only felt right to release back into the city when the Eagles won again. Enjoy the jacket. I hope you get the opportunity to release back into the world with another Super Bowl win soon. Go Birds.”
This was just another reminder to Rannabargar on why she fell in love with the Eagles fan base.
The La Salle student didn’t grow up an Eagles fan like most living in the city of Philadelphia. In fact, she grew up in Dallas and didn’t follow sports too heavily until moving here five years ago.
“It’s like a culture thing up here,” Rannabargar said. “It’s almost like you have to be a sports fan by default. And I love it. I love how passionate the Philly fan base is.”
Now, Rannabargar considers herself a diehard Eagles fan.
Before ending the day at the Art Museum — where she found the vintage Eagles jacket — it began at 9 a.m. in South Philadelphia by the Oregon Station stop on the Broad Street Line. Rannabargar was joined by 10 other friends to catch a glimpse of the team riding by. After seeing the team’s buses drive past them, Rannabargar decided to keep the party rolling — solo — by taking the train toward the Art Museum to catch the speeches.
» READ MORE: A.J. Brown bought a life-size mannequin to display his unwashed Super Bowl uniform
“I don’t know how often this is going to happen,” Rannabargar said. “From 2018 to now. I didn’t know when I could experience this again. I wasn’t here in 2018 and I don’t know when we’ll be back, so I wanted to take in as much as possible. Luckily I went there solo, because I was able to maneuver my way through the crowd.”
After Rannabargar found the jacket, she decided to post it on the Philadelphia Eagles Fan Group Facebook page. Since then, her story has caught the attention of many, with plenty of fans and friends chiming in with their own ideas for what she should do next with the jacket.
Rannabargar has thought deeply about each idea and has finally made a decision on what to do next.
“I’ve gotten some really good ideas just from reading people’s comments,” she said. “I’m going to make a copy of the note, and you can actually make patches with it. So I’m going to make a copy and make it into a patch and sew it inside where I found it. And then whenever we win again — hopefully next year — I’ll write my own [note] and turn it into a patch and sew it in there, and hope when I leave it, the person who finds it next will continue the tradition.”
The last owner held onto the jacket for seven years before they could release it back into the city following the team’s Super Bowl LIX win. While Rannabargar loves the jacket, she’s hopeful it finds a new owner much sooner than that.
“I thought it was so cool that somebody held onto it for that long and decided to return the jacket into the wild and put faith in someone else to hopefully do the same,” she said. “What a cool tradition to possibly start and hopefully we have a two-peat, so next year it’ll find a new home.”