Yamaha's racing identity is blue now, but it wasn't always. The company's early racing history included yellow liveries — bright, visible, distinctive on track. Kenny Roberts, who won three consecutive 500cc World Championships for Yamaha from 1978 to 1980, is often associated with the yellow-and-black Yamaha color scheme that preceded the full commitment to blue.
Photo by Martin Pettitt / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
Yellow persisted in Yamaha's identity as a heritage color — the color you use when you want to reference the lineage rather than the current program. Anniversary editions, special releases, throwback colorways. Yellow Yamaha gear says "we remember where we came from" in a way that blue Yamaha gear can't, because blue is the present and yellow is the past.
This jersey is from the yellow tradition. It's a standard MX-cut jersey — the construction is the same as any Yamaha race jersey from the era — but the color makes it different. Fewer were produced because yellow wasn't the standard order. Fewer survived because fewer existed in the first place. The scarcity compounds over time.
At $175, this is the second most expensive jersey in our vintage collection (after the yellow mesh at $250). The price reflects rarity and the specific collector demand for non-standard OEM colorways. It's not a blue Yamaha jersey. There are blue Yamaha jerseys. This is the other thing.
Vintage. There's one.
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Header image: Photo: TaurusEmerald, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons