'Indie sleaze' tees are now investment pieces...
I interviewed vintage band t-shirt dealers about market trends, tips on spotting fakes, Thailand, and more
(Mitch Hedberg voice) I used to collect vintage band t-shirts. I still do, but I used to, too. At 43 years old I’ve gone through multiple stages of collecting, from acquiring in real time shirts that are now selling for hundreds if not thousands of dollars (RIP my Sonic Youth Washing Machine shirt I got at Lollapalooza 1995), to picking them up in the early 2000s on ebay (I got a Slayer Reign In Blood tour tee on ebay in like 2004 for…$35), in the mid 2000s from thrift shops (I found both an 80s Replacements and a 90s Pixies shirt at a thrift shop in San Jose on the same day) and also around the world (once again, RIP the 80s Morrissey shirt I picked up for $50 in Tokyo in 2008), to the last decade or so of paying increasingly insane amounts of money for a piece of cotton with a screenprint on it. I don’t carry shame (a useless emotion) so I’ll just tell you that the most I ever spent was $400 on an original Replacements Don’t Tell A Soul shirt. It was so good.
That one, like many others I had collected over the last three decades and change, were lost back in January in the fire (tiiiiiiiiiiiny violiiiiiiiiin being played at an piercingly high volume). I thought I’d get over the whole band shirt thing and maybe start wearing I don’t know, more women’’s clothing (do I even own one “blouse”?) but thanks to the incredible community of Bandsplain listeners and friends my collection started to grow again rapidly and now I’m so back (I even replaced my cherished little 90s bootleg Dinosaur Jr Green Mind shirt with almost perfect accuracy thanks to the good people at Jerks in London).
When you have an addiction to chasing the dragon of dream vintage band tees, you develop relationships with people who are equally unwell who help feed your habit. I thought it might be fun to interview some of my favorite online sellers about their work, the current market, how to spot fakes, and what to invest in next (did not expect it to be Crystal Castles shirts but like sand through the hourglass babe…).
Here are my interviews with Dog London, Disorder Vintage, Strip Tees Vintage, and Demclothez:
Rory Bruton - DOG LONDON
IG: (@dog__london)
How did you get into this line of work?
Been collecting shirts for years… I’m obsessed with music and I always just wanted cool band shirts, but when I tried to buy them new they fit terribly had nasty prints and were just awful all round… so then got into trying to find the originals. Personally I’ve always been obsessed with clothes as much as music and I wanted a nice garment as much as an original band shirt!
When did you notice a big shift in the demand for vintage band shirts?
Definitely in Covid time - everyone was at home emptying their closets putting stuff on eBay, and people had loads of extra money and no way to spend it.. .was a perfect storm and prices and interest just skyrocketed for a couple years.
What bands/artists do you get asked for the most?
People come to me for the underground metal and hardcore stuff mostly. And British bands of course. I’ve had a lot of fun sourcing old Oasis shirts the last few months. Sold a lot of them in the shop to everyone coming over for the shows. There’s a huge crossover with Oasis fans and metal/hardcore fans.
But yeah I’ve sort of dug myself into the extreme music niche haha. Stuff like early Dying Fetus, Bolt Thrower, Godflesh, and Crowbar are super hot for me currently. And the 80s and 90s US hardcore stuff like Meruader, Hatebreed, Madball, Cro-Mags etc. That’s my bread and butter!
Some of the hardcore stuff has doubled in price in the last couple of years. Turnstile effect perhaps…
Who is your median customer?
The range is quite wide, especially in person in the shop we get a lot of people of all ages/genders/backgrounds who when they see the stuff it really resonates with them on a visual level.
But a lot of my business is still online, and it’s more collectors looking for certain stuff. Probably the median customer is someone like me… a 25-40 year old bloke who is unhinged enough to spend a lot of money on an incredibly stupid metal shirt.
How often do you come across “fake” vintage tees - with fake old labels sewn in or the like?
There are a lot out there - I didn’t really realize a lot of it until I went to Thailand and saw what people are doing out there! You get the obvious fakes of course. Fake Brockum tag shirts of all the ‘grails’ - your Nirvanas and Snoop Dogg tees etc…But a lot of the issue is people in the west think stuff is weird parking lot bootlegs and the like, but then you go out to Thailand and you see dudes screenprinting more obscure stuff on good old period-correct vintage blanks. And it will be a band you’d never expect people to rip, like Agnostic Front or something… Then they’ll fuck up the print with sandpaper and sun fade the tees. Even heard of people burying them for a few months!
How do you authenticate a shirt's provenance?
On a basic level you can generally just check the tags, copyright, if other comparable shirts look the same have the same tags and copyright etc. there will often be a discrepancy in the print if it’s fake. It’s often hard to know until you have in hand. I’ve been burned a lot of times! Not to get too cosmic about it but you can usually just sort of feel if something is vintage once you have it in person… just got that magic! Or something…
How do you determine price?
Pricing is a tough one. As a dealer I have certain stuff that I know my buyers are looking for and can sort of quickly go off my knowledge of my customer base. It’s all about knowing the market. If you google a t-shirt you’ll see stuff that’s been sitting online for three years and it’s priced at three times market value. For a more realistic value check, out eBay auction sold/completed prices. At the end of the day the price is just what someone’s willing to pay for it! And just ‘cos a certain dealer can sell something for £500 doesn’t mean you will be able to without a lot of hassle, because they’ve worked hard on getting that customer base. Not that being a t shirt dealer is any form of commendable profession.. it’s almost as embarrassing as being a dj.
Do you think the band shirts people buy now will gain value to the same extent that shirts bought in the 90s have by today? Will people be dropping large amounts of cash for shirts from 2025 in 2055?
I think there will be certain things… like now Crystal Castles shirts from like the late 2000s are really expensive. But there’s not much from that era that’s really collectible right now... and that’s already like two decades ago!
It’s hard to say what will resonate but it’s also difficult because the quality of stuff being made now is generally so awful haha. For me a lot of the appeal of the pre-year 2000 t-shirts is how they feel, how they drape on your body, how the screen prints look as they age. But who knows maybe we’ll have £1000 turnstile shirts in 2055 lol.
Ryan Haas - DISORDER VINTAGE
website: disordervintage.com (locked/sold out currently) I open the site for seasonal collections 4 times a year.
IG: disordervintage
When did you start in this line of work?
My start was in 2015. I’d been buying vintage my whole life, post college I found myself as a head buyer at a resell shop in Boston, which closed in 2020 during the pandemic. After that I went solo with Disorder.
How did you get into it?
I’ve been a music nerd for as long as i can remember, but I became deeply obsessed with fashion when I was in college. I started thrifting (back when you could actually find something at a real thrift) and primarily focused on band tees.
When did you notice a big shift in the demand for vintage band shirts?
There’s always been a massive demand in my market, but the ever changing landscape of buyers and sellers comes with an ever changing door of what people are trying to buy. The first “big shift” came during the pandemic 100%. Band tees began garnering the same attention that contemporary arts, nfts, crypto, trading cards were getting.
What bands/artists do you get asked for the most?
I specialize in indie rock; my clients can always come to me for k records bands like Beat Happening and The Softies, Sarah Records bands like Heavenly and Boyracer, but my biggest skill and favorite thing to do of late is finding a client a very specific shirt. I have a knack for being able to find very rare and specific items quickly.
How often do you come across “fake” vintage tees - with fake old labels sewn in or the like?
Every single day, and the fake shirts are getting better and better by the month at this point. Old tags sewn into a shirt, fake tags being made, fake blanks being printed on -if it’s worth something and there’s enough demand, bootleggers will print fakes.
Any tips for identifying fakes?
The first thing I do is check into the person I’m buying from and analyze their other items. There are often times when the price is too good to be true, and a quick scan of the sellers other items will answer my doubts without me having implicitly tell the seller that the item is fake, and this reduces tension in the buying process. That’s a more advanced approach, an easier way for beginners and those looking to get into buying process is to look at the shirt construction, examples being the collar construction, stitching & tags. Another thing to always look into the graphics themselves, if you have the shirt, feel the graphic, does it feel new? Does it smell like ink? If you have any hesitations, avoid buying the item. I’ve come a long way just trusting my intuition, and I think that’s an innate sense that everyone possesses.
What is your holy grail?
1989 Beat Happening Black Candy shirt, I had one and sold it. I regret that deeply, I haven’t seen one available since - the black one the Krist Novoselic used to wear.
Do you think the band shirts people buy now will gain value to the same extent that shirts bought in the 90s have by today? Will people be dropping large amounts of cash for shirts from 2025 in 2055?
BIG YES! Buy shirts at every single show you go to and just stash them, when an artist drops a merch package, buy it. Support the bands you love, but also view it as an investment. I’m starting to see bands that I grew up with’s merch start to resell. If you asked me in 2013 if a Crystal Castles shirt was going to be worth $500, I would’ve laughed - but that’s where we are at.
If I made a graph that showed market price on say, a 90’s Sonic Youth shirt from when the shirt was first sold to present, you’re gonna see dips, upticks, drastic price changes, but the one thing that applies to most bands is that the graph will show an increase in price overall with constant trend up.
Dan Coultas - STRIP TEES VINTAGE
IG: https://www.instagram.com/stripteesvintage
How did you get into this line of work?
I was visiting Toronto around 2019 and that's when I first saw a shop dedicated to solely vintage shirts, I was slightly dumbfounded at the prices back then (though I wish I could go back and buy half those shirts now at those prices ha!) Fast forward about a year into the pandemic - I found a giant box of old tees at my parents house, looked through some of the prices and was surprised, started wearing a ton of them again then started buying for personal. When things didn’t fit I started reselling them and then realized I was finding more things than I could actually ever have at one time or need, so I started flipping some of my finds. It was way easier and less competitive back then
What bands/artists do you get asked for the most?
More and more it seems like certain bands have a period on top - right now Ozzy and Black Sabbath shirts are booming, Oasis has been super popular since they announced and then did the tour, there are some staples like NIN and Deftones who I've always both collected and sold a lot of. I'm seeing the tide turn slowly towards the early 2000s bands though, particular the indie sleaze staples, YYY's, Crystal Castles, MGMT. Which is great cause I've a huge stash of that stuff
How often do you come across “fake” vintage tees? What tips do you have for not getting scammed?
This is getting increasingly more frequent which is really frustrating, the fakes are getting so good that to the untrained eye they're really hard to distinguish, I see whole pages dedicated to selling reprints, perfectly faded and an almost identical tag. Be careful out there people! Defunkd has an incredible archive of real vs fake tags, to do your homework. But don’t just learn your tags, learn to study photos from authentic sellers and look for differences in the print especially how it sits on the fabric, the stitching (double stitch vs single stitch neck for example). If you’re not sure, send it to someone who will help you instead of wasting your cash.
How many band shirts do you personally own in your own closet?
I have never actually counted them until now but at a rough tally around 200 from a variety of eras and genres. Each week some new personals come in and other things get sold, its pretty cyclical
What is your most prized possession?
My big love is shoegaze tees, so probably either my Hum - Stars/You'd Prefer an Astronaut or more likely my Slowdive - Just for a Day which I just got this year.
What is your holy grail?
I've been super lucky to cross off a lot of my major ISO (in search ofs, in band tee loser speak) in the last couple of years, but if anyone has a Pale Saints - In Ribbons, an original Sabres of Paradise Tee or an 80s Throbbing Gristle, slide into my DMs
Jack DeMarco - DEMCLOTHEZ
IG: @demclothez
How did you get into this work?
My parents indoctrinated me into their favorite 70s-80s pop culture growing up. And I became pretty hyper fixated on finding similar clothing (specifically t-shirts) worn by musicians and in movies from back then. I started off by flipping excess clothing online from my second hand wardrobe I was accumulating from thrift shops like savers. That really snowballed as I started connecting with other sellers via Instagram, in person at thrift stores, and making local connections finding people who wanted to sell off their T-shirt collections.
When did you notice a big shift in the demand/market for vintage band shirts?
2020 with the pandemic was such a huge shift. The granting of stimulus checks in combination with the immense online retail therapy that was happening at the time, people started pouring money into t-shirts.
What bands/artists do you get asked for the most?
The vast majority of buyers are currently after 90s grunge / alt rock (Nirvana, AIC, Soundgarden, Melvins, etc). I tend to sell a lot of 70s-80s punk tees i.e The Cramps, Damned, Black Flag but the collector pool is a lot smaller and more niche.
How often do you come across “fake” vintage tees? Any tips for spotting fakes?
I often see fakes pop up on eBay as well as on Instagram. You have to be very careful buying online and even the most knowledgeable of sellers have usually been fooled at one point or another. I’ve seen some shocking good fakes and a lot of obvious ones. Purchasing from reputable sellers is importantly as well as studying up on what you’re purchasing via archives like Defunkd.com and Tshirtslayer.com.
How do you determine price?
Price is determined via sold comps online and talking with other sellers, over time you gain knowledge to pretty quickly set a price within range of the market of a specific t-shirt.
How many band shirts do you personally own in your own closet?
I think I’m around 100-150 tees at the moment, which I feel is on the low end compared to a lot of other collectors I know. Or maybe that’s just my justification to hoard haha.
Do you collect other things?
Yes! I collect a lot of clothing that was sold at “rockstar” and punk boutiques at the time. Shops like Sex/Seditionaries, BOY, La Rocka/Johnsons, and Kitsch-22/Modzart. My favorite acquisition recently was a Granny Takes A Trip suit!
What is your most prized possession?
Really tough to pick but maybe either my Eddie Cochran shirt from Westwood / McLarens store Let It Rock or my Kitsch-22 Johnny Thunders shirt.
What is your holy grail?
A 70s The Real Kids shirt currently
Anyway here’s a picture of me hungover on the floor at LAX in the aforementioned Morrissey shirt with my BLACKBERRY after missing a flight, no idea when this was, maybe 2009? I miss BBM…
See you Friday (probably!) xx
Yasi, love everything about your work! The content, the passion, the effort, the history. Could listen to you for hours… and I do :).
Awesome piece. You're quickly nailing this substack thing. Dominating the podcasting world wasn't enough? ❤️