When Jack Moylan left Lincoln City in August 2026, the fee attached to his departure was almost impossible to comprehend when placed alongside the club’s transfer history.
The fee is undisclosed, but it is believed to have been around a £3m initial payment, with add-ons potentially taking the deal higher still, representing another huge step forward for City in the transfer market. It came just 12 months after Jovon Makama had become our first £1m-plus sale, leaving for £1.5m plus add-ons in August 2025.
Transfer fees are always difficult to pin down in the modern game. Add-ons, sell-on clauses and various triggers mean the headline figure is rarely the full story, while the dreaded ‘undisclosed fee’ has robbed supporters of certainty over plenty of deals.
Historically, things were rather simpler. Fees were published, records were acknowledged and, as a result, we can track City’s biggest sales back more than a century. We recently looked at the progression of Lincoln City’s record purchases, from four-figure sums through to the arrival of Andrei Coubis. This is the other side of that story, beginning with £1,500 in 1913 and ending, for now at least, with £3m in 2026.
What stands out isn’t simply how much the figures have risen. Some records remained untouched for decades, while others barely survived a season. Andy Graver increased the record more than eightfold in one move, Jack Hobbs (seemingly) held the modern mark for around 20 years, and then Makama and Moylan doubled the club record in successive summers.
Here is the progress from 1913 to 2026.
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