Wednesday, December 12, 2012

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?


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:









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.


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.

13 comments:

  1. This reminds me of the awesome vintage Fleetwood Mac shirt that I had when I was a teenager... it was a grey baseball top with a picture of a penguin holding a baseball bat on the front. GOD IT WAS AWESOME. It was also special, because my parents bought it on one of their first dates.

    Unfortunately for me, my sister also loved it, and she stole it from my closet frequently. Eventually, it disappeared for good :'( My sister did some rotten things when we were younger, but that is just unforgivable!

    On the flip side, I do own one of these (http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-MICHAEL-JACKSON-BEAT-IT-TOUR-84-T-SHIRT-1984-XS-ORIGINAL-/390505296204?pt=Vintage_Unisex_T_Shirts&hash=item5aebedf14c - but not for that price HAHA). I know, I know... everyone's jealous :)

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    1. Too bad about the Mac shirt, that double crossin' sister of yours owes you a new one! Tell her they only run about $200 on ebay. What a skunk! Additionally, blood boiling jealousy! O.M.G. Michael. That shirt is WOW.

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  2. oh my gosh i can't believe they are that expensive! i guess the kind of person who would shell out 1500 dollars for an iron maiden shirt wouldn't wear it, but put it in storage or some kind of display? i dont even know! i have a cool beatles shirt from the 70's that I got from travis' grandma's attic and i bet my dad threw away a bunch of cool ones. what a bummer, i'll have to keep my eyes peeled at sales! did you see the crazy doobie brother SLED at a sale in west nashville during the summer?

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    1. DOOBIE. BROTHERS. SLED?!?! I can't believe I missed that! I bet the Beatles shirt is a pip, that's so cool.

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  3. Holy wow at some of those prices! Ebay is so mysterious to me. Why do some things sell for a kajillion 'merican dollars?? Who buys them, and where did they get their magic money tree? And why does that person with the money tree always, always outbid me? Anyway, congrats on your awesome t-shirt!

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    1. I can't understand it! And again, people are *always* actually buying these things for three figures. How many Miley Cyrus/Katharine Heigl/other celebrity types don't even blink at $400 for an Aerosmith shirt? It makes no sense! I'm glad I snatched up my little reprint guy while I could!

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  4. Oh man, I've gone on many rants over the years on how the world of rock and roll memorabilia is a dark, endless black hole from which there is no escape. If you love a band (as we both do -- I dig on Fleetwood Mac too, though my real obsession is Queen), it's just totally overwhelming how much amazing, awesome vintage merch is out there, all of it INSANELY expensive. And the t-shirts are the worst, just ridiculously overpriced. You really found an amazing resource! There's definitely nothing wrong with a good repro when it comes to band tees! I'd better check out their Queen selection... ;)

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    1. It's just wrong! At the $750 price quoted for that Roxy music shirt mentioned above, it had better have a serenading Bryan Ferry IN IT. I used to have a rad Queen reprint t-shirt of the cover of "News of the World", but it's disappeared somewhere into the house. :( But that means they're out there!

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  5. As I sit here in my favourite Flight of the Conchords tshirt, singing Edge of Seventeen, which I listen to EVERY SINGLE DAY OF MY LIFE, I am wondering if we were separated at birth? Your FM tshirt is PERFECRT! Sarah xxx

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    1. Haha, style twins! Thanks! Great minds think alike. :)

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  6. Holy hell that's AMAZING, I must remember to skim through t-shirts while I hunt at thrift stores at all time, it's incredible what you can make from these shirts. The Skippy Haha vintage reminds me of what I read recently, with Etsy being so saturated you need to stand out to sell. This seller's done a fine job, that idea's hilarious! Now I've got to find MY gimmick...

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    1. I was looking through the little listings and went...is that Bea Arthur? And then Tupac showed up. DEFINITELY an attention grabber, right?! You'll find your gimmick! :)

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  7. Wholesale t shirt transfers make your online shopping much more convenient and more pleasant. When you have an event organized, for instance, it can be readily sorted out via your access to the printing company that provides an efficient job in t shirt transfers.

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