Vintage Rock T-Shirt Buyin' Blues

Good morning!

So remember the She Was a Bird post the other day about my piteous, all-consuming re-interest in Fleetwood Mac? As my thirteen year old self resurfaces, steeped in slavish rock and roll scholarship, I've been trying to augment my collection of Mac and Mac-related records (semi-complete!) with a concert t-shirt. You'd think this would be an easy enough task, having things I didn't have in 1998 now, such as a bank account, a debit card, the internet, etc, etc. In the last four weeks, I've both watched and subsequently  mourned the closing of at least ten auctions, each of which featured a wispy, almost-forty year old, used t-shirt that sold for more than $60. Sometimes dramatically more than $60! My hopes were raised sky-high when a Tusk era concert shirt was listed earlier in the month for a starting bid of 99 cents....ONLY TO CLOSE AT SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS. The world is cruel! It was this exact shirt, though, which means maybe $75 was kind of a bargain? Speaking relatively, anyway?

Original FLEETWOOD MAC vintage 1979 tour TSHIRT ($200.00)

Look how cool Stevie looks! Look at Lindsey's face! This shirt would have been PERFECT. Maybe I could bootleg a halfway decent version with a printable t-shirt transfer? 

Navigating the wild waters of Etsy and Ebay vintage clothing merchants, it's really incredible how collectible and expensive almost any halfway decent 1970's-1980's era rock and roll t-shirt can be.This one seller has 796 items in his/her shop, starting at $30 for a Kenny Loggins shirt, and going all the way to $1,500 for a rare Iron Maiden shirt (which, granted, does feature a mummy surfing on a shark's head in front of a volcano, but still).When will my idle rifling through Goodwill racks and rummage sale boxes pay off like this? Who buys these shirts? Is it common policy for people several income tax brackets above this lowly public servant to shell out three digit sums for, again, however awesome, used clothing? $1,500 buys a LOT of lace sixties' dresses, is all I'm saying.

Some shirts from Heartbreak City, U.S.A., population: Me:

ViNtAgE 80's David BOWIE Serious Moonlight '83 Tour T Shirt m/l ($198.00)

Vintage 1982 80s Roxy music avalon european tour t-shirt ($750.00)

Vintage 1984 80s Kate bush concert t-shirt ($500.00)

Vintage 1982 80s The Rolling stones t-shirt roundhay park concert original ($150.00)

Vintage LOU REED 1986 tour SHIRT ($150.00)

Original PAT BENATAR vintage 1982 TSHIRT ($100.00)

Original JOAN JETT and the blackhearts vintage 1982 tour TSHIRT ($250.00)

S / M ~ vtg 70s 1979 BEE GEES concert tour 

T SHIRT * disco BEEGEES * medium ($89.99)

Is your heart not aching? Are you not human! There's about a million more where that came from, not one even teetering around the $50 mark, but all more than exceeding it without so much as a bat-of-eye. My parents didn't go to any good concerts in this time period (save a Cab Calloway show...can't really wrap my head around my little 1982 parents watching "Minnie the Moocher" live, as jealousy clouds my vision, but there you go), so there's no attic-raiding to produce this level of quality t-shirts. In my own collection, I have an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer t-shirt I found at an estate sale and paid I think $15 for, and a Toto 1980 tour shirt from Matthew's dad. I also found two vintage ironed-onto-t-shirts Elvis shirts at an extremely overpriced estate sale where, for some reason, these shirts were a dollar apiece (they look exactly like the Etsy ones I posted below, except on light blue and red backgrounds, respectively). But I think that's it for concert t-shirts! Note the pointed lack of Mac.

source, source, source, source

What is a poor, lovesick rock and roll girl to do? Would I ever find a Fleetwood Mac tshirt under $100? Should I have bought the one that was listed for $80 on etsy and is now sold? Will I die FM shirtless?

No, my friends! Because there IS a happy ending to this story:

Ignore my poor jaundiced complexion (not sure what the iPhone was doing there...), but here's the t-shirt I did manage to secure from online bidding. Trunk LTD is an online t-shirt seller that specializes in original and reprints of vintage t-shirts. The resultant reprint products look either more or less like the original t-shirts, but at $40 a pop, are not cheap. This Tusk t-shirt was listed on Ebay in a lot of four other shirts, none of which I was interested in...Matthew contacted the seller to see if they would split the group, and this one made its way into my possession for only $15! Do you love that $15 sounds like a lot to me in my normal vintage buying habits, but being buffeted as I've been by $100 price tags, it sounds like a steal when it comes to FM shirts? I'm just pleased as I can be.

Have you ever had your heartbroken over a sky-high ebay auction price? Do you have any great vintage rock t shirts from your teenage or adult years that someone like me is probably pining over right now? Which of these would you actually consider breaking the bank for? Do tell!

Have a great Wednesday, and I'll see you guys back here tomorrow!

PS: Etsy seller Skippyhaha has done an amazing thing on their vintage t-shirt store... as I was browsing through results for "vintage concert t-shirt", I stumbled across the non-plussed face of Bea Arthur starting at me from the other items for sale box. What a little moonlight and Photoshop can't do.