[Music] what's up guys and girls welcome to another video I'm Ryan roots and for those of you who don't know I am a pretty big vintage t-shirt seller and collector I've been collecting for years and selling for years and one of the questions that comes up all the time for us is people ask us how do you identify a vintage t-shirt so what makes a t-shirt vintage and then also how do you authenticate a vintage t-shirt because there are a lot of fake t-shirts out there so what's the difference how do you know that something is vintage and how do you know that that vintage t-shirt is authentic so I have a bunch of examples to show you because I don't just want to talk about this I want to actually show you examples I've gone into our inventory and I've picked out a ton of really good vintage t-shirt examples a bunch of different tags so you can look and see what tags are true vintage as well but before I go into that we have to establish what make a t-shirt vintage how old does a t-shirt have to be for to be considered vintage well widely accepted in the Vintage Community is 20 years now that has ranged over the past couple years some people consider 15 years or older to be vintage but most people will agree that for a t-shirt to be considered vintage it needs to be 20 years or older so as of this video it is 2022 right now so that would mean that any t-shirt that was produced in 2002 or before 2002 that would be considered vintage in the community okay so what do we look for when we're trying to identify a true vintage t-shirt the main thing that I look at personally first is the tag if the tag is there which a lot of the times the tag is cut out of the shirt but if the tag is there that's the first thing that I look at because that's a pretty good first indicator also 99 of the time a vintage t-shirt is going to have a physical tag screen printed tags are typically not going to be vintage but because that process of screen printing the tag on the shirt that just wasn't around in the 90s and the 80s and before so again that tag is the first thing that I look out for but like I said before sometimes the tag is cut out so the next little indicator that I look for when I'm assessing the vintage t-shirts is the stitching so the stitching on the sleeve and the stitching on the Hem of the bottom of the shirt now a lot of people know the terminology single stitch or double Stitch single stitch or one line of stitching is a good indicator that that shirt was produced in or before the 90s t-shirt manufacturers in the US switch to double Stitch the majority of them switch to double stitch in the 2000s so if you see that single line of stitching it is a good indicator that that t-shirt could be vintage but again just because a t-shirt is single stitch does not mean that it is true vintage there's still multiple companies today that use that single stitch method over the double Stitch method companies like Omar junk food Polo Ralph Lauren still does a lot of their t-shirts single stitch so just be aware that single stitch does not guarantee that the shirt is vintage and again the opposite is true as well just because a t-shirt is double stitched if there's two lines of stitching that doesn't mean that that shirt is not vintage there were a lot of companies that switched from single stitch to double stitch in the 90s and in fact a lot of companies were producing double stitch in the 90s in Europe so you'll see a lot of true vintage 90 t-shirts coming out of like the UK and the Europe Market that are true vintage double Stitch so just because an item is single stitch doesn't mean it's vintage just because it's a double Stitch doesn't mean it's not vintage those are just good indicators to look out for along with that tag so the next indicator that I like to look for is a date stamp or a copyright stamp on the graphic itself so if you look at the graphic on a t-shirt if it's an officially licensed t-shirt that was made in the 90s or 80s or whatever especially bantees you should see a license date or a copyright date not all of them them have them and again there are bootleg shirts there's true vintage shirts where they didn't print that copyright date but the majority of true vintage licensed shirts that were produced back then will have that copyright date with a date stamp so that's a good thing to look out for as well the next thing that I look out for that's a good indicator that a shirt could be vintage is a natural fading and natural wear if a shirt's 30 years old more than likely it's going to have some sort of flaws it's going to have some sort of wear some cracking in the graphic some fading maybe some pinholes maybe the stitching's loose somewhere maybe there's some bleach marks or some paint marks if these shirts are worn especially if you're finding it like at a thrift store at the Goodwill bins more than likely if it's true vintage it's going to have some sort of distressing to show that the item is that old and then when it comes to even earlier shirts like 70s prints and 80s prints those shirts are typically going to run a lot smaller they made them smaller back then so even if they're tagged in XL like an 80s banty even if it's tagged XL is going to probably fit like a modern day medium maybe a modern day large but most of the time those 70s 80s tees are definitely going to run a lot smaller so that's a good indicator that that item is vintage so if you take all that knowledge and put it together the tag the stitching the date stamp and the wear the fade on the item if you take all that together and you put it together those are really good things to use to verify if a shirt is true vintage that doesn't mean that it's authentic some of the fakes are getting really really good like some of the fakes coming out of Malaysia and Thailand they're getting almost everything right they're getting the tag rights they're single stitch the date stamps there they'll even do natural distressing where they you know they mess the graphic up a little bit so that it does look like it is authentic vintage they are getting very good at it now in most cases the people making those fake vintage t-shirts they're not going to be focused on like a a 20 or 30 valued shirt it's just not worth your time to do that most of the time they're looking out for those you know four or five six hundred dollar a thousand dollar plus vintage t-shirts that they can fake reproduce and then try to get more money for them that way so if you come across a vintage t-shirt and it's like a you know like a location t-shirt or like a sports tee that isn't really worth those hundreds of dollars more than likely that item is not fake it is probably true vintage if it has those other things going for it the stitching the fade if it has those other things going for it and it's not like a super expensive t-shirt you're you're probably okay thinking that that shirt is vintage but if you get a high dollar shirt like a vintage wrap tee for example some of these wrap teas especially like the bootleg 90s raptis like the parking lot tees that were made at the shows some of those shirts are highly highly collectible and can be worth thousands of dollars and those shirts are being faked and here's the thing you can only have so much knowledge you know like even me I've I've touched tens of thousands of vintage t-shirts I've seen lots and lots of fake vintage t-shirts but I definitely don't know everything I am not an expert on authenticating all different areas of vintage so what I do there's an app that just came out recently it's called legitimate I'll link it in the description of this video it is incredible in my opinion it's one of the best things to happen to the Vintage community in a while because what it is is you can take your shirt and upload it to this platform and people can vote on it and decide if that shirt is authentic or not and then in addition to that if you want to really get into it you can pay to have that shirt authenticated by one of these top level vintage t-shirt authenticators people who have been doing this way longer than me some of the biggest collectors in the world are authenticating for this app so that's what I do like I'm not very very well versed in raptis I know enough to get by but I also don't know enough to not get hurt or taken advantage of so if I get a high dollar rack tea I will pay the fee through legitimate to get that shirt authenticated so that I know for sure that it is authentic so when I go to sell that shirt or pass it on to somebody else I can say hey look here's a certificate showing that this shirt is authentic and here's how much it's worth because they'll tell you like the average value of the shirt as well now this video is not sponsored by legitimates but because I love the app so much I did reach out to them and I asked them if they would do anything special for our audience if you have T-shirts you want to upload and get authenticated and they said absolutely we'll give you guys 25 off so if you use the coupon rally roots for any of the authentication services that you have to pay for I think one of them is like 18 to get it authenticated by like those high level people if you use that code rally Roots When you upload it you'll get 25 off of that and again I put the link to that app in the description of this video but anyway guys and girls that's the knowledge that I use to identify and authenticate vintage t-shirts and before you go away like I said I have a ton of real vintage t-shirt examples to show you and then I also want to show you a fake rap tee that I submitted to legitimates and they came back and said that's definitely fake I knew it was fake when I submitted it and I didn't tell them just to test you know to make sure that everything was good to go with that so I'll show you that rap T that is fake and then I also want to give you some examples of some really good true vintage tags and Graphics to look out for so here we go thank you for watching please do me a favor hit the thumbs up button on this video feel free to share it with anybody who you feel could use this knowledge and yeah here's some examples of some awesome vintage t-shirts so here's that fake wrap tee this is a Wu-Tang forever shirt and you know to the common person you might not know that this is fake it's on that like European looking tag the graphic looks alright it is single stitch the print is pretty good it has the nice like wrap T style back hit on it it's a really good shirt but this one is fake and it did come back fake through legitimate and I'll show you what they said I'll pop it up so you can see what the expert said all right here's some examples of some great true vintage t-shirts sometimes the date will be on the tag too so you can see this is a 1997 Looney Tune shirt Taz on the front it has the date stamp date hit at the bottom right there this one is double Stitch you can see the two lines of stitching but it's still true vintage 1997. here's another example two lines of Stitch double Stitch but again 1997 copyright date and this is a true vintage tag that it's on that nice toltecs tag really nice little Betty Boop shirt Disney does not often date their stuff so here's an example of a true vintage Disney tag made in the USA true vintage Disney tag you can see the Disney licensing hit down there but even though this one doesn't have a date on it it is still true vintage on that Disney designs 90s tag here's another really great one you got Arnold Batman and Robin Mr Freeze dated 1997 copyright stamp down there and then this one also has the double tag and I think there's a date yeah there's a date on the tag too 1997. so there's an example of a vintage Batman shirt another great movie tee you'll see this tag quite often with vintage movie tease Stanley DeSantis this one is an extra large this is a true vintage Stanley DeSantis tag and you've got that nice Titanic tee with the licensing stamped on here 1998 and again when I was talking about wear on the T-shirt you can see there's cracking in this graphic there's fading to the tee those are all great indicators that the shirt could be vintage here's an example of a true vintage European tag so they are just playing like that sometimes but you've got the Last Action Hero this one is dated 1993 Columbia pictures at the bottom and this one is single stitch so you can see that nice single line of stitching this is a really good example of a single stitch t-shirt here's an example of an 80s band tee so on that nice green stars XL but again like I said earlier this is an extra large and you can see that it fits pretty small the shirt behind it is an XXL and this XL is Tiny compared to that shirt it's because it's from 1989 you've got a 1989 poison shirt single stitch on that screen Stars tag and speaking of liquid blue this is a true vintage 90s Liquid Blue tag it's pretty easy to tell with liquid blue stuff because there's the white tags which are 90s and then there's the gray tags and then the screen printed tags which are like two thousands plus typically so this is the only true vintage 90s tag the white Liquid Blue tag and you've got a really awesome little Grateful Dead with that 1994 Grateful Dead merchandise it and then speaking of bootleg wrap tease so this was not an officially licensed wrap tee Biggie Smalls but it is still true vintage so this was made in the 90s it's an XXL this is a true vintage tag you can see the cracking and the distressing in the graphic and again double Stitch sleeves doesn't mean anything this is a true vintage shirt this one we put through legitimate as well and it came back 100 authentic really really nice rare biggie shirt another example of an 80s tag size medium you've got the who American tour 1982. this style is called Raglan Raglan style or baseball T style still single stitch on the sleeve and it has the back hit as well one of my favorite early 90s pieces this is a 1993 Rocco's Modern Life piece and here's another example of a great vintage tag Tennessee River Gold size XL date stamp Nickelodeon at the bottom there I love this graphic and then lastly here's a nice example of a 1997 Spider-Man Marvel this would be considered a Marvel Mega a shirt tagged at the bottom 1997. this one is single stitch one line of stitching all over print because the print goes all over the shirt and again the tag is right there Marvel Comics license made in the USA there you go guys and girls love you all later [Music] thank you