Category: Shirts

It’s important to note that I’m focusing on bootlegs that are actually vintage, so at least 20 years old. This has nothing to do with modern bootlegs that feature counterfeit tags like the ones showcased in our fake tag archive. Those are meant to be vintage knock-offs, while vintage bootlegs are two decades old, often feature original artwork, and are generally accepted by the vintage community. In the mid-2000s I connected with a gentleman who was a concert merch manager in the 1980s and 90s. He had thousands of vintage t-shirts in storage – and we partnered up to sell ... Read more

This is a gallery of the rarest and most expensive t-shirt relics from the company formerly known as Blue Ribbon Sports. It all began in 1972 when Nike made t-shirts for the Olympic trials – and the company’s founders were hot-pressing runner’s names on the rear of the tee. The rest, as they say, is history. Nike started as footwear company, tees weren’t initially on their radar, so keep in mind many of their t-shirt designs from the 1970s had yet to feature Nike tags, which became a staple in the 1980s. Some values are based on sales, others are ... Read more

In today’s day and age, where vintage t-shirts are fetching top dollar, dishonest people are using every trick in the book to fool us. Due to an influx of convincing counterfeit tags in the last decade, we recently authored a guide to authenticating a t-shirt using the tag. And we also started an archive of fake tags project so you can easily spot them in the wild. But what if the counterfeiter extracts a genuine vintage tag from another shirt – and installs it into a fake? What is a Sewn-in tag? This is the practice of installing a foreign ... Read more

We’ve outlined several methods counterfeiters use to create convincing vintage t-shirt knock-offs in our guide to Authenticating vintage tees – but modern direct-to-garment printing technology is one that required further investigation. Can DTG be used to create convincing counterfeit vintage t-shirts? I got a crash course on DTG back in 2007, when I was tasked with having shirts made for fellow attendees of a bachelor party. (Because I’m the “t-shirt guy,” and my pals still don’t understand I don’t make t-shirts *@#$&!) I didn’t know anything about DTG (direct-to-garment) at the time, but there was a spot up the street ... Read more

The man behind the eponymous shirt company Stanley DeSantis was more than a clothing manufacturer. Though best known for his tees with the unmistakable, bold tag showing his name, DeSantis was also a successful businessman and renounced actor starring in many classic films and television series, including Boogie Nights, Candyman, Alf and many others. Being in the entertainment industry, most of DeSantis’ tees featured licensed designs for movies and tv shows — many of which demand high prices on the market today. 1970s As early as the mid-1970s, DeSantis created and sold shirt designs as a student at New York ... Read more