[Music] good morning everyone welcome to another video my name is ryan roots and in today's video i want to talk about vintage t-shirts and in particular higher-end vintage t-shirts so i know vintage t-shirts isn't what a lot of you guys sell but i wanted to make this video anyway to kind of show you what to look out for while you're out there thrifting or going to estate sales or you know a lot of people don't know how to identify true vintage t-shirts so in today's video i'm just going to show you some higher end t-shirts we can look at the tags we can look at the stitching the date stamps we can look at some particulars of some vintage so if you're out there looking you may see something that you've seen in one of our videos and you know okay that's a piece that i should probably purchase now before i jump into it i do want to say i am by no means an absolute expert on vintage t-shirts yes i've seen thousands and thousands of vintage t-shirts and we've been lucky enough to be able to get our hands on some more expensive items but like i said i'm no expert there's definitely people who've been in the vintage game much longer than me 20 30 plus years and usually i will look to them for help on certain items but like i said i do feel like i've seen enough vintage and i've sold enough vintage to at least be able to show you guys what to look out for i do also have a new vintage wholesale box that came in today it's from overseas so i thought i could unbox that with you guys as well and we can look at those t-shirts as well so we're going to talk about vintage t-shirts i'm going to show you some examples we're going to talk about how to identify them and we're going to talk about how to value them in the marketplace so if you enjoyed today's content make sure to hit the thumbs up button on this video and subscribe to the channel and before we get into the actual video i know you guys can see by the title the title is we sold our most expensive vintage t-shirts and for those of you wondering that's the t-shirt right there so this is a 1994 the mask vintage t-shirts i don't know if you guys remember this movie but one of the greatest to do it jim carrey the mask from zero to hero it is dated 1994 and it does have a back hit right there it's on a hanes ultra weight tag size extra large and this t-shirt sold for twelve hundred and fifty dollars so that's the biggest individual sale that we've had on a t-shirt in a little while the next closest was an eon flux t-shirt that we sold for i believe it was eleven hundred and twenty five dollars overseas so that was the next highest but yeah twelve hundred and fifty dollars really really cool sale on that now to be fully fully transparent um which i think is really important when it comes to selling vintage t-shirts because a lot of people like see these accounts with these high-end t-shirts and they're like wow you thrifted that for a dollar and then you sold it for 800 or you sold it for a thousand dollars when in most cases that's not true not to say that you can't find t-shirts like this at thrift stores and estate sales but it's it's quite rare to find them out there most of the higher end t-shirts that we get are from buying out other people's collections or from working with people who hunt these t-shirts all the day and then resell them to us for a higher price so this shirt in particular i actually bought for a thousand dollars which sounds like a crazy amount of money but again it sold for 12.50 so i made 250 on the one t-shirts but i paid up for it i paid a thousand dollars and i know and again in most cases you guys aren't going to be doing that i understand that so don't get me wrong i'm going to show you again how to identify these tees so you can find them while you're out there and hopefully you can get some good deals i hope i've seen it happen i hope you can find a shirt like that for two dollars and flip it for a ton of money but i just wanted to be fully transparent a lot of the shirts that we have here and a lot of the shirts that we've sold in the past we have paid up for not to say that we're not making money on them but we have definitely had to shell out some decent cash to to buy the shirts but either way i mean i was happy to get my hands on that shirt and happy to get it to the right home why don't we do this now let's let's jump over to my office and let's go through the box that i just got in the mail today and then i'll pick out i'll pick out some more of these higher end vintage t-shirts and i'll get close-ups and show you the tags and the stitching and the dates so you guys can get a better understanding of what a vintage t-shirt looks like or what a higher end vintage t-shirt looks like okay like i said this box came from overseas it came from mexico and um i paid sixteen hundred and fifty dollars total for everything that's in here i believe there is i believe there's 17 or 18 pieces so let's break into this box first and then like i said i will go through what makes a t-shirt vintage how to value a t-shirt and how to identify a vintage t-shirt as well actually i think the best thing to do because they're all kind of folded nice i'm just gonna take them out of the box so that it's easier for me to go through them by the way from what i recall most of this stuff is to be vintage wrestling i know that there's there's at least one higher higher end piece in here so i will show you that as well but i believe most of this stuff is vintage wrestling we have a 1998 stone cold steve austin t-shirt this one is front and back cool shirt this looks like a goldberg who's next shirt this is on the old fruit of the loom clothing tag so nice goldberg graphic on the front and then this one also has a back big wcw who's next on the back this is a shirt i've had quite a few times in the past on the gildan heavy cotton tag this is one of those nwo wrestling tees again dated 1998 at the bottom man remember old school dwayne the rock johnson nice little fruit of the loom size large one nothing on the back of this either but you've got the big the rock graphic on the front of it with the wwe licensing and there should be a date on this one as well yeah so this one's 2002. so the rock 2002 t-shirts again something to keep in mind the value of vintage t-shirts is really what anybody is willing to pay for the item and typically what we say in the industry is the shirt has to be 20 years or older for it to be considered true vintage but like i said this is a 2002 t-shirt so it's really one year off because 2001 is now considered true vintage but i'm saying that to tell you that even though this is not considered true vintage there are still some 2000s mid 2000s teas that sell for a really good amount of money i mean i've even seen 2010 2011 t-shirt itself for really good money so even though it's not considered true vintage that doesn't mean that there's no value in the t-shirts so just keep that in mind when you're hunting as well don't bypass something just because it's got a 2004 2005 date on it that shirt could still be worth a decent amount of money we've got an all sport tag and this is the osborne family shirt pretty cool graphic on this one i remember watching this show too i remember he had the the english bulldogs running around and i was like i definitely have to get one of those dogs look at that graphic man how 90s is that right on the wcw 1998 tag the big buff daddy prince on the front this one's good this one's clean usually these are like really bad cracking on them um but this one's this one's super clean nice and then these have a back as well i believe yeah it says still the stuff on the back huge this is a cool shirt yeah nice big front graphic nice big back graphic that's a good example of a quality wrestling tee it looks like we have another tnt tag and another stone cold steve austin shirt again this one's just the front graphic big stone cold spell out on there full body shot and dated 1998 again also i'm glad that there's stone cold t-shirts in here because one they sell great for us they've always sold great for us but two i heard i think it's true i've heard that the same people that did that documentary the last dance about the chicago bulls i heard that they're about to do a documentary about stone cold steve austin so if that happens now when the bulls one happened bulls vintage t-shirts went crazy so i'm assuming the same thing might happen with the stone cold shirt so that's something to keep in mind as well vintage does follow trends right so when things come out and um you know when things get more popular the t-shirts around what's happening there will get more popular too a prime example of that is grateful dead t-shirts went up in value considerably when nike released those grateful dead shoes so because people were looking for the vintage t-shirts to match their new grateful dead nikes the value of the vintage t-shirts also shot up because people were paying three four grand for those grateful dead shoes so if they're paying three thousand dollars for a pair of shoes why can't they pay you know two three hundred dollars for a grateful dead shirt looks like we have another stone cold t-shirt here big steve austin on the front and then this one does have a back it says professional hardcore wrestler on the back i think that the neck on this one i think the neckline yeah i'm sure actually the neckline on this one has been cut and then altered so it's been stitched back together it's not a bad job right they just kind of it looks like they widened the neck up a little bit maybe a professional hardcore wrestler was wearing this shirt but they widened the neck up just a little bit and stitched it it may hurt the value slightly but i don't think it's going to hurt the value too too much we've got that hollywood hulk hogan lightning shirt this one is on the old toltecs tag single-sided hollywood hogan hit on the front flex in those hulk hogan buys okay i think this is the first non-wrestling t-shirt that oh no i showed the aussie osborne or the osborne's ones but i think the rest have been wrestling so this is uh this is a really really cool betty boop graphic it says all that this is all like glitter paint really crazy graphic and this is one of my favorite companies that made shirts in the 90s licensed by freeze freeze made like the space jam t-shirts and all those ones like the big looney tunes graphics so i love freeze super cool all-over prints on the front and then continue it on to the back as well it says and more and again you've got that glitter paint all over it's really nice example of this t-shirt it has a faded out tag but it is single stitch all the way around and again it's dated with that license by freeze at the bottom there next up we have another stone cold shirt 1998. it's actually kind of rare that you see them on the gray shirts usually they're on black t-shirts so this one's actually pretty cool that it's on the on the heather gray again licensed world wrestling federation and it says because stone cold said so and down there again it's dated 1998 so good graphic um and a good piece for someone who maybe collects stone cold shirts and doesn't have one in this color next up we got another rock tee on the triple a tag this one says the rock know your role and wow look that's the rock without all of his uh tattoos he's looking kind of clean there with his big gold chain and uh bracelet crazy to see uh dated again 1998 and this one does have a back it says this rock doesn't bleed the only bad thing about this shirt is that it's a size medium which kind of limits the market a bit but i usually look for larges and extra larges the best vintage shirts for us uh are extra larges true xl's so like 23 by 30 23 by 29 28 those are the ones that seem to sell best for us next up this is gonna be a 2000's tag liquid blue i'll show you an example of a 90s tag liquid blue as well so you can see the difference i see this all the time people selling this tag as true vintage as a 90s t-shirt so just be wary of that this gray tag is not a 90s liquid blue print it's a reprint in the 2000s and actually this one is dated 2004 so this is a 2004 t-shirt but still a really cool t-shirt pink floyd dark side of the moon fronts and big dark side of the moon back graphic as well whoa this one is crazy it's on probably my favorite tag for music teas it's a spring ford classic made in the usa this one is a size extra large but i love shirts on this tag they're usually like really good quality t-shirts they're usually really nice and thin typically 80s but yeah look at the graphic on this thing it's from the moscow music piece festival and you've got it in russian down here as well with the soviet and american flag that's pretty uh that's a pretty crazy graphic does have a back hit okay yeah so it's dated back here august 12th and 13th 1989 and look at this lineup on the back bon jovi scorpions motley crew ozzy osbourne cinderella gorku park skid row nuance regatta s and it says at the bottom says make a difference foundation this is a pretty amazing t-shirt wow for the age it's in excellent excellent condition it's got a really nice fade to it the graphics are cracking slightly but not not too bad the shirt isn't worn that bad tag's still there no holes man this is it's a really cool piece this is the kind of stuff that i do get excited about next up on the giant tag old vintage giant tag this is one that we've had before um it's a summer sanitarium graphic and at the bottom it says meet the inmates let me show you the full graphic here so i believe this was a 2000 tour yeah i think it was from 2000. again meet the inmates big graphic on the front and then it should have yeah so you've got the you've got the tour dates on the back and featuring metallica corn kid rock powerman 5000 system of a down um and then the tour dates down here and it should yeah so it says tour 2000 right up there so 2000 this one is vintage absolutely 21 years old now next up this is actually one of my favorite stone cold steve austin graphics you've got the skeleton with the stone cold beer right there and it's on the old wf tag so that's the full graphic there it says wf attitude on the front of it stone cold right there and then on the back it says 100 pure hellraiser again with the wf licensing hit on the back it's a good shirt and then the last two shirts in here are wrap t-shirts one's like a true wrap style t-shirts and then the other one is an m m shirt so this one's actually from the movie and believe it or not this is a super super valuable t-shirt it's from the eight mile movie it's on the emino knits tag and it should have yeah so it's got the back as well says every moment is another chance pretty crazy shirt this one has a lot going for it it's got rap music movie m m it's a good size it's a size large it's a clean shirt it's in great condition so this one we should do very well with and then last but not least this is definitely the most valuable t-shirt in this box size extra extra large on the made in the usa tag we have a beautiful example of a 1971-1996 tupac memorial t-shirt so a big graphic on the front of it these are bootleg t-shirts so these were not licensed t-shirts they were made by people but it makes them even more valuable because they're very rare they're very hard to find so big graphic on the front and then this one has the big graphic on the back as well so that's everything that was in that box like i said i believe there were 18 t-shirts there and i paid sixteen hundred and fifty dollars shipped to america let me know in the comments do you think that this was a good purchase do you think that i'll make money on this box or do you think that i'm crazy and i'm gonna lose money i personally think it was a good box i think we'll make a lot of the money back on the tupac t-shirts and then everything will sell as it sells and we should make some decent money on them so with that being said guys and girls let's leave the office now and i'm gonna go pick out a couple t-shirts and we can talk about again what makes them valuable why they hold their value and everything to do with what i know my knowledge my small amount of knowledge on on true vintage t-shirts [Music] okay so it's the next day now hence why i changed my shirt i didn't just change it in the middle of the day but it's the next day now um what i've done i picked out five vintage t-shirts from different categories i'm going to show them to you show you the tag show you the stitching the date stamps all that stuff so you can see like how to identify a vintage t-shirt but before i do that i'll do that at the end of the video before i do that let's talk about how to determine the actual value of a vintage t-shirt so the first thing that we need to determine is what factors actually determine the value of a vintage t-shirt so in my opinion and this is kind of an order some things i guess you can mix around but this is kind of an order in my opinion the most important thing is nostalgia so is there an attachment to a vintage piece for example did you collect marvel pieces when you were growing up you have a fascination with x-men as wolverine your favorite character so do you have some sort of an attachment to the piece i think that's the main thing that drives the value of vintage how much i personally like the piece or what stories are attached to that piece the next most important thing i feel is hype and influence so hype being like has a famous person worn the shirt has travis scott worn the shirt for example right so like he'll wear a shirt and the value of it will just shoot up in the air and then are there larger accounts in the vintage community again influencing the market so you know if i have a hundred thousand followers on instagram and i say this is what's hot right now this is what's really selling for a lot of money right now that can definitely influence the market so celebrities again wearing stuff and then also people who are respected in the markets um that can definitely drive the value of vintage up next i think condition after that obviously plays a big factor uh condition isn't super important to some people but you know obviously like if the sleeves are chopped off of something or if the shirt has been cropped that's really going to affect the value of a piece so condition does matter when it comes to big changes or big issues with the shirt little things like little stains or little tears or you know little like again like around my collar that's all fraying that's stuff that doesn't really affect the value too much in my opinion when you get into super super high-end shirts obviously those little things can affect the value especially if you're selling to a collector who wants a pristine piece but a lot of the time those little you know issues with the vintage piece a lot of the time people expect vintage to have little flaws so it doesn't really affect the value but again the big changes like chopped collars cropped shirts sleeves gone that's gonna affect the value big time the next factor i think is collectibility so how collectible is an item again you know did you collect marvel stuff when you were a kid are you super fascinated with disney pieces do you collect anime t-shirts so how collectible the item is i think does play into the value of the shirt as well the next biggest thing i think is size so for us the size that sells for the most money is size extra large larges and extra largers command a lot more money than smalls and mediums it's just the way that it is and excels for us anyway are by far the best or highest selling price point so size does matter now there's things like you know old 80s 70s 80s shirts like old raglan shirts that sometimes people are just buying those for the artwork they're not even really buying them to wear they're just buying them to remember maybe being at the concert or they like the graphic or maybe they're just looking for that one piece to complete their collection so size doesn't matter as much as other things i think but it still does matter if someone's looking to wear the shirts the best size you can get is a true xl next is the tag a lot of people only collect shirts on certain tags or they only buy shirts on certain tags because they know how they fit them so for me for example i love t-shirts on the old free the loom tag like 93 94 fruit of the loom tags those are the ones that i personally like to wear because they fit me really well and i like the quality of the shirts but a lot of people are attached to certain vintage tags so if a graphics on one tag and then a graphics on a different tag sometimes people will pay more money for the one on the tag that they prefer so yes the tag does matter and then the other thing is if the tag is cut out that can definitely affect the value of the t-shirt as well next age obviously age plays a factor like i said earlier in the video 20 years or older is you know that's what's considered typically in the vintage community that's what's considered true vintage so the older a shirt gets usually usually it's worth a little bit more money but again those mid 2000s to late 2000s those t-shirts can still command a decent amount of money that's why i put age kind of lower in the list because age does matter but it doesn't matter as much as you may think so another important factor i think is has the shirt been reprinted so a prime example of that is the the pulp fiction shirt so that shirt has been reprinted over and over and over and over again and i think when a shirt gets reprinted the original the true vintage one becomes more valuable because people are obviously looking for that shirt it's a desirable shirt but the original is harder to get it's the original it's kind of like it's kind of like if there's an original painting and then that painting is you know a whole bunch of prints are made of that painting the original the actual hand-painted one the price of that spikes up because people want the actual original artwork it's the same thing with t-shirts once a t-shirt gets reprinted in my opinion i've seen the actual price of the original t-shirt does start to skyrocket the next thing i think that determines the value of the t-shirt is your market so where you sell the items if all you're doing is getting items and then basing it on ebay sold comps and listing items on ebay and taking whatever you can get for it on ebay you're definitely not going gonna get as much money as say again someone with a hundred thousand instagram followers in a true vintage community when they post a t-shirt they can ask more money for that t-shirt and again that's just the way the market is right so because we have more followers on instagram we can ask more money for something because we have a wider base of an audience so we're it's going out to more people and more eyes are seeing the shirt it doesn't mean that we're going to price something double what it's worth but it does mean that sometimes we can get a little bit more for an item on like a straight instagram sale because it's going out to a lot of people than on say an ebay sale that's up for auction and then lastly one that i wanted to include is color the color of the t-shirt i think does matter doesn't matter a whole lot depends on the person that's buying the shirt right so i like buying black t-shirts i don't really like buying white t-shirts too much but you know the color does seem to play a factor sometimes one cool thing is a lot of people like true fades on vintage t-shirt because it shows the actual age of the shirts like this one for example right so you can actually see that this was a black t-shirt but the fade the fade's really cool you can tell that the only way to get this true fade is age so you can tell that it is an older t-shirt just by the fade but some people only like black t-shirts some people only like white t-shirts some people like only tie-dye t-shirts so it does play a factor i don't think a huge factor not as big as some of the other things that i mentioned but it does play a factor for sure color so in my opinion those are the things the main things i'm sure there's other things but those are the main things i think that determine the actual value of a vintage t-shirt so now that you know how the value of a vintage t-shirt is determined the next thing to find out is well how do i price out the shirt like how much is it actually worth where do i look to find how much the shirt is actually worth so again when you go to actually price out a vintage t-shirts i think that there's a few things that you should keep in mind number one experience obviously if you've had the t-shirt before if you've sold a t-shirt in the past if you've researched the t-shirt before if you kind of like know the price range just from past experience that's that's the number one factor i think in actually pricing out vintage next is credibility and again sometimes credibility just means i have a huge following i have a huge instagram account or a huge twitter or whatever it is i have the market that makes me credible credibility also means a lot of past sales people vouching for you saying i've purchased from this person before they provide a good product at a good price so when you have that credibility it helps you find the correct price to ask for a t-shirt and then lastly sold comps on websites so you can go look at past sales on ebay d-pop etsy grailed even independent vintage websites that is a way to find the value of a vintage t-shirt in the marketplace keeping in mind that sometimes you're gonna find much lower prices on certain shirts because there's people like me for example who go on these websites and look for missed price shirts and we snipe them so we'll buy them so that we can then get them and sell them for the actual true value so maybe i'll see something that's a 300 shirt mispriced for 100 bucks i'll quickly buy that shirt and then i'll be able to ask 250 300 for that shirts in the right marketplace and then one other thing you can do is you can reach out to someone with more experience than you um like for example if someone shoots me a dm on instagram asking me now here's the trick guys you have to ask if you're reaching out to someone for advice they're taking time out of their day you have to ask like in a really respectful way maybe even offer them something i don't really know i don't mind getting the questions as long as people aren't just like hey i found this shirt how much is this shirt worth if you're like hey i enjoy your videos thanks for making them i appreciate you guys by the way i found this shirt and i'm having trouble identifying the value of it would you mind like giving me your expert advice or something like that right it just makes the person who you're reaching out to feel a little bit better about you know taking the time to give you the advice but that is one way to find the value of an item reach out to someone who has more experience than you and ask them in a kind respectful way for their opinion and then lastly if you still don't know how to price something out if you still after doing your research you still don't know what the value of the item is one thing you can do is just throw it up on auction put it on a site like ebay start it at a price that you're comfortable with and let the market decide either that or just price it at a buy it now price that you're comfortable with that you're happy with and then when the item sells be happy don't go oh i sold it for 400 i could have got 800 for it if you've made money if you're happy with the price that you got it is what it is be happy so in my opinion that's how you determine the value of a vintage t-shirt and that's how you price comp out to figure out how much to ask for the shirt so i think that's where i'm going to end the information part of this video um i'm gonna flash over like i said to these shirts that i've picked out now and i'm just gonna show you again some tags to look out for show you the stitching show you the dates and all that stuff but i'm going to flip over to that in a second but i just want to say thank you guys so much for watching this video i really appreciate it if you found any value out of this video please hit the thumbs up button on it i've tried to include a lot of information in the video but again i'm gonna say it i am not the expert there's a lot of really good vintage sellers out there that have been doing this forever and some of them do have good youtube videos out there as well so what i'll do i'm gonna find some good youtube videos from some of these people who are actually experts in the field and i'll link them in the description of this video so if you want to go learn more about vintage check the description of this video go check out their videos subscribe to their channels if that's what you want to do but again i do appreciate you all watching the video today and here's some examples of some higher end vintage [Music] t-shirts thank you [Music] [Music] uh [Music] foreign [Music]