What is a real vintage t-shirt?

There are so many t-shirt sites using all kinds of terms to describe their wares that it is becoming difficult to understand exactly what it all means.  ”Retro t-shirts“, “vintage t-shirts”, “original t-shirts”, “licensed t-shirts”;  mainstream terms have become saturated to the extent that even fairly obscure terms have real competition.

The term ‘vintage’ does however still have real meaning. A true vintage t-shirt is a garment manufactured sometime in the past, usually in the 1970s or 1980s but also in some cases the 1990s. 1960s t-shirts seem to be less often found due to their obvious age and rarity. They are almost always licensed t-shirts (they are produced by or with the copyright holder’s permission although vintage bootleg t-shirts are still valuable), usually printed on long defunct t-shirt brands and, by and large, are very expensive (well for a t-shirt!).

eBay is a treasure trove for those looking for some vintage threads but as you may expect once they make it onto the world’s market place they go for a premium. So for your delectation let’s hit the virtual car boot market and dig up some of Mr Cloud’s favourite vintage t-shirts…

We are big Beatles fans here at Mr Cloud with a particularly soft spot for George. His Extra Texture album didn’t exactly set the world alight but this vintage t-shirt shows the kind of self-depreciating humour that he is fondly remembered for:

OHNONOTHIMAGEN close up of a vintage George Harrison t-shirt.

Front promote displaying the cover of Harrison's 1970s Extra Texture album.

I’d like this shirt myself but at a Buy It Now price of $350 USD (that’s approximately £235 GBP) it’ll have to wait. It is certainly an interesting piece regardless.

This shirt is rather similar to our Doors Waiting for the Sun t-shirt that we mentioned on our blog a while ago, using a similar colour scheme it is printed on those baseball type jerseys that seemed to be popular in the late 60s/70s. Again this fetched $300 on ebay:

Vintage 1960s Doors t-shirt.

Of course it is the heavy metal t-shirt that features most prominently among those vintage t-shirts offered on eBay. Perhaps it is not surprising for a genre that relies so heavily on such fantastical gory imagery as much as the music itself. One such pearl (as brought to our attention by the fantastic defunkd.com) is this awesomely tasteless 1980′s Slayer t-shirt promoting the South of Heaven LP:

Tasteful 1988 Slayer T-shirt courtesy of defunkd.com

Valued at approximately $500-$1000 USD the letter (printed on the rear) is from the local military academy informing the dangler’s parents that their lucky son has been accepted for enrollment (click on the pic for the full transcript). If you are going to do this sort of thing then why not go the whole hog?

There are a lot of Pink Floyd t-shirts as our quite small collection shows, we barely scratch the service. Pink Floyd do have a good track record of reusing vintage prints by reissuing them on new t-shirts. This can create a strange situation where a vintage t-shirt is virtually identical to a modern one. Take this Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt in our store:

Modern Pink Floyd t-shirt with vintage print.

The vintage versions on eBay are virtually identical, the difference being the date of copyright beneath the graphic.  Vintage prints from as recent as 1982 and 1987 are being offered from between $100 to $150 USD. So it would seem that even if the actual print looks entirely modern (and in this case identical to a widely available modern t-shirt) the age itself adds value.

It seems that the growth in the vintage t-shirt market is persuading license holders to reissue their own vintage reproductions. Our Ozzy Osbourne t-shirt mentioned earlier this week is a good example of this practice; it provides a renewed revenue stream from old ‘products’, so I can’t see this not continuing into a real growth area. Personally I feel that this is good news as it allows today’s buyers to buy some classic t-shirts at reasonable prices. What this does to the vintage market on eBay only time will tell…

P.S. Some of the above images are from eBay (unless otherwise stated), do a search on there if you want to locate the auctions mentioned.