The Decade-Long Authentication Saga of a “1965” Beatles Tour T-Shirt
It all began on August 13th, 2014 at 11:03 am. The Defunkd Collective was operating as a vintage t-shirt marketplace. Our platform featured a “SHOW” section that allowed anyone to upload a photo of their t-shirt without necessarily offering it for sale. That’s when an unknown user named “donnafromtoronto” uploaded a tee I had never seen before.
This Beatles American Tour T-shirt was purchased at Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens in 1965. This is extremely rare as I cannot locate another one anywhere on the internet and a Beatles Memorabilia expert told me that he has only ever seen one other, many years ago.
You can see the original submission here.
From what I could tell from the single photo, the print, and the construction of the tee – I thought it was possible it could be that old. But also several alarm bells went off – for one, the logo wasn’t very accurate. What’s up with that? And why have I never seen it before? Is it that rare? Is it a bootleg from that era? Perhaps handmade? Maybe that explains the logo. Whatever the case may be, I couldn’t fully make sense of it.
My go-to classic rock expert, Max Bittle, was intrigued too. He offered a plausible explanation, it could be a local record store promo or the handwork of a local promoter or fan. But he was optimistic, cautiously, and said he’d keep an eye out for it in photos from that concert.
Not soon after debbiefromtoronto posted it I reached out to her via email. I was curious about its origins, and well, because, I’m in Toronto too.
She replied quickly and offered more information:
I received this shirt from the woman who bought it at Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens. She attended the concert – couldn’t hear anything but women screaming as soon as John Lennon clapped his boots together. I was attending a street festival/sale years ago and she was selling some items at her son’s house. She went into the house and brought it out for me after we chatted. She was wealthy (I could tell from her jewellery), knew that it had value but just wanted to give it to me to give to my son.
Now I’m even more curious, as it’s always nice to have a story, and the details seemed so specific.
So I asked if she was selling – and she said yes, her son wanted $200.
I have it on eBay – but can pull the ad if you are serious. We can meet somewhere if you like. I have a car and I am on the subway line.
I was serious, and she didn’t even need to call me Shirley. I figured it was interesting enough to warrant $200. But it was still steep considering I was a broke new dad at the time, my son was only 5 months old. I explained the situation to my infant child, and he agreed to start reusing diapers so we could afford the shirt.
“For sure, thanks! It will likely sit in my collection. I’ll be there at 3 pm sharp – unless I hear from him. I will have my wife and baby stroller with me so he’ll know who I am,” I replied when she suggested meeting at a bank near my home.
I met her son in the lobby of said bank, he showed me the shirt. It was all very cloak and dagger. I examined it, it seemed boxy, with very basic construction. It was single-stitch top and bottom, but double on the collar. It seemed small enough to suggest it could have been a product of the 1960s. So I handed her son the loot, and he gave me a handwritten receipt and guarantee from Donna.
At this point, I figured I’d be able to have answers about this shirt relatively quickly. I had no idea how long this tee would “sit in my collection.”
I photographed it right away and shopped the photos around to some colleagues. Max was still intrigued. A second dealer said, “It might be legit, but you’ll have a hard time proving it – when it’s the only one.” A third dealer and habitual doubter of any shirt that he doesn’t own chuckled at the very idea of it and said, “That’s not even vintage.”
The fact that it’s the only one is a problem. It means it’s rare, but it also means people won’t be trusting of something they don’t believe is canon. Only remnants of the tag remained, so I couldn’t determine what brand it was. But what was left of the tag kept me hopeful; the remnants also seemed like they could have once been an old tag, especially sitting on that raw, unfinished seam/neckline.
I approached several Beatles experts, none of whom knew anything about the shirt, and all quickly pointed out it wasn’t official.
Agreed.
There’s no way this could have flown under the radar for so many years if it was official. But the other thing I quickly learned is that Beatles collectors had zero interest in anything that was not official. Bootlegs seemed to be frowned upon in the few forums that I visited. The fans of other bands often mostly embrace them. I suspect this will change in the coming years as the original crop of Beatles collectors is replaced by more modern and open-minded counterparts.
Over the next few years, I tried various ways to see if I could determine its origin story.
About a year later, I posted it on a “Vintage Toronto” Facebook page, hoping to get a lead. The page had over 100k fans at the time, and they were very engaged – maybe one of them would recognize it.
It was the right place to post, the demographics were spot on. Several people who attended the concert chimed in, but unfortunately, none remembered this t-shirt.
“I was at the first Beatles concert at the Gardens one late summer. Might have been 65. Don’t remember any tee shirts. This one is particularly bland! Not exactly representative of the Beatles is it! I wouldn’t want it,” said Linda.
“Well…there goes the surprise birthday gift I had planned for you!” I replied cheekily.
“I was at the concert. You couldn’t hear them and we were right behind the stage. I don’t remember T-shirts,” wrote Elizabeth.
But that was it, no more comments came in, and no leads were generated.
First things first though…
What’s the first Beatles t-shirt?
Did they even have t-shirts in 1965? This was a different era in fashion, and band merch was still in its infancy. For this mission, I dove headfirst into newspaper archives to see what I could dig up.
This page contains a form, you can see it here
1964 was the first time I found the keyword “Beatles t-shirt” in the newspaper archives. I also learned the terms “beatlelegging” and “beatlelegger” were coined that same year due to the problems with Beatles merch being bootlegged. Also, there are more 1960s Beatles tees floating around than I thought, although they appear to be bootlegs.
More evidence is mounting that my shirt is a bootleg. But I still haven’t found a match for it.
With that in mind, I circled back to donnafromtoronto because of something she said in a previous email, “a Beatles Memorabilia expert told me that he has only ever seen one other, many years ago.”
Her voice (that I had never actually heard) started echoing in my head.
“..a Beatles Memorabilia expert…many years ago…Beatles Memorabilia expert…many years ago…”
Hi James – He worked at John and King. I don’t remember his name and I don’t have that email account anymore. I can check around the web. He only saw a picture of it but recognized it. Said that he had only seen one other and it was “years ago”. And that was probably 2006 or 2007.
I scoured the net and Google Street View and tried to figure out what operation she was referring to, but I couldn’t. I emailed one business, but they were unfamiliar with it.
BUT WAIT! Donna is from Toronto; maybe I can figure out which house she purchased it from and politely knock on the door.
Hi James – I wish I had more info. I was at a neighbourhood sale – somewhere in the Greenwood and Mortimer area of East York. The woman was named Lynn or Linda. No last names exchanged. It was her son’s house. She lived in Forest Hill. She was tall, blonde and in her 60s. She purchased the shirt at the Garden’s the night of the show, but she didn’t say anything else except that she had been hanging on to it for years and it was time for someone else to have it. We mostly discussed the concert itself. She said that she was 15 years old and that her father waited for her outside during the entire show.
Donna was still very responsive, even years after the purchase.
But at this point, the leads had officially evaporated.
In 2016, I thought it might be a good idea to contact some auction houses to see if they were interested in the piece. But mostly, I just wanted to get their impression of it, and perhaps they could offer a lead or a contact who would know.
“Hello, James, unfortunately the T-shirt isn’t for us at this time. One of our specialists told me he thinks it’s fake so we have to pass for now. We appreciate the offer and wish you the best of luck with it.”
I asked why the specialist made that assessment, and I wasn’t offended; I was more interested in hearing the reason; maybe he knew something I didn’t, and I could put this whole investigation to rest.
“I forwarded him the pics and he replied saying he didn’t think it was good. If he doesn’t feel comfortable we have to be cautious and pass. No hard feelings at all James. Have a good one!”
I knew, in the absence of evidence, it was on me to prove what it was. And maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was a handmade piece from the late 1990s, an art student experimenting with screen printing.
Going forward, I would dabble in archive photos of the Beatles concerts, hoping to catch a glimpse of the tee. Nothing.
A few years later, a gentleman contacted me through Facebook inquiring about the t-shirt being for sale. He saw the Vintage Toronto post and said he could offer $50. I said thanks, but no, as I was still trying to determine how old it was. I asked him if he recognized the shirt, and he avoided the question. He was very cryptic. It made me feel like he knew something that he wasn’t divulging because he would be revealing something that would drive the price up, and then I wouldn’t sell it to him.
About six months later, he contacted me again, asking if I was ready to sell. I said no again. But that second contact definitely made me feel like I had something here, given this guy had circled back after all that time.
About a year ago, another stranger through Facebook asked if I wanted to part with the shirt. I didn’t reply because I wouldn’t sell it until I could explain what it was. The last thing I want is for someone to believe it’s from 1965, and it turns out it’s not. I always stand behind my tees. Plus, the saga had gone on for so long, I knew I’d probably never sell it based on its story.
Then, the case went cold. I had no leads. So it went into my drawer, and I just figured it would forever be a mystery.
Then on, February 23, 2023 the mystery began to unravel.
I got an email from a gentleman named Tom through the Defunkd contact form.
I have a 1965 Beatles American tour shirt exactly like yours … I’m shocked to see one finally online… contact me for pics for archival purposes and interest only and not for sale … the sister shirt to yours.
My eyes popped out of my head after reading that. He’s also clearly not interested in selling it, meaning there really could be something to this shirt. I immediately contacted him, asking for photos and as much information as he could give me about it.
A few hours later, Tom sent this photo.
“I got this beauty many years ago from a Value Village thrift store here in Victoria BC Canada!,” he wrote.
That’s it! It’s the same T-shirt, BUT interestingly it has black ink instead of blue. So not only do I now know it’s more than a one-off – there are multiple versions of it. I had a solid new lead. Given that his product was also Canadian-based, it seemed likely that this was a product of Canada. But since Tom thrifted it, he’s not the original owner – so its origin story is still a mystery.
But more importantly, I noticed there was still a tag attached. And it looked to be in decent shape. BINGO. Now we can really get to the bottom of this.
I returned the email asking about the tag, and he replied and said he would take a photo of it and send it shortly.
But then Tom went silent.
I emailed him a few days later, asking for a photo. And he didn’t reply.
NO. NONONONONO.
Please, Tom. Please don’t Let Me Down.
I started a new email thread asking him to please let me know about a photo so I can authenticate our tees.
Nothing.
Two days later, he responded.
“Yes I’m in the middle of moving and misplaced a couple of shirts I found it and will send you a pic tonight,” he wrote.
Tom almost freaking lost the shirt!
There was no photo emailed to me that night, btw.
It wasn’t until two days later that Tom came through with a photo.
F*CK!
That is not a t-shirt from the 1960s.
Mildly disappointed but happy I finally had answers, I started investigating Tour De Force but couldn’t find any record of it. Until I searched the CA number on the tag, which is basically a Canadian RN number.
The CA Identification Number, also “CA Number”, is a number used to identify a person or a company who deals with textile products in Canada. The textile dealer uses the CA number on products in place of a name and a postal address.
The entry marked the date of issue as 1997.
1997?! Hey, it was still vintage, sure, but meh. I still couldn’t figure out why a shirt from 1997 would have such a basic construction to it. It was very no-frills, made-in-Pakistan bootleg-ish – unfinished inside collar seam and side seam, and both these shirts seemed a bit warped. It was almost as if it was a project from a sewing class. I will say, though, that it was quality cotton.
I still needed more answers. The company information I found on Tour De Force Fashions eventually connected me with a gentleman named Jack, with a relatively unique last name, who just so happened to be on Facebook.
And one of his profile pictures – a photo of him sitting at this drum set:
This HAS to be the guy.
So I sent him a message on Facebook.
No response. The message didn’t show as being read.
Then, a few hours later, I got a message on IG in my requests. It was Jack’s son, and he was wondering why I was trying to contact his dad.
So I explained the situation, and he chuckled at the whole saga.
He explained that these t-shirts were made in the 1980s, and his dad had the CA number before 1997.
Ok, that’s good news, it’s older than 1997!
He also talked about the odd construction of the shirt. “These weren’t standard blanks, they were cut and sewn in Hong Kong,” he explained.
Now the odd construction of the t-shirt made sense.
He told me there was a second version of the shirt that was a crop top, for ladies. Eaton’s (a massive Canadian-wide department store chain) bought a skid of them, and they also appeared in one of their catalogs.
He also told me the shirt was advertised in the classified section of Rolling Stone Magazine. But his dad couldn’t remember anything more than that.
Eventually, his dad, Jack, responded to me on Facebook, so I asked him a few more questions directly.
Did the ad in Rolling Stone mag run multiple times?
“I don’t remember.”
Do you remember who was on any of the covers?
“No.”
Did the ad feature a model wearing the t-shirt, or was it just a text/headline ad?
“A drawing.”
Jack didn’t mince words.
So my new mission became finding the ad in Rolling Stone magazine. But sadly, I didn’t have much to go on. It was in the classified section sometime in the early 80s, and it’s a drawing of the shirt.
I started digging around to see where to look at vintage Rolling Stone magazines.
After reaching out to The Toronto Library, I got more bad news:
“Hi there,
Abstracts wouldn’t include the classified section.
Then I contacted Rolling Stone directly to ask if I subscribed digitally if I’d get access to 1980s copies.
“Hi James,
Thank you for contacting Rolling Stone today, we do have some older magazines on our website if you have a membership you should be able to access them. If not the best solution would be to use google or the local library and see if they have any older magazines to go through. If there is anything else I can help you with please let me know and I hope you have a great day!!”
Back to the ol’ drawing board.
That’s when I decided to reach out to the community – maybe I could crowd-source this authentication effort. Somewhere among my followers, there must be a handful of vintage rock enthusiasts who have slowly stashed away Rolling Stone mags while thrifting.
I got a handful of replies from some helpful friends. A few of them reported having some copies, checked them, and couldn’t find the ad. (If you are reading this, please DM me – I couldn’t find the messages on IG and want to include a shout-out to all of you.)
But one person told me he had a CD set called Rolling Stone, Cover to Cover. It was an archive of CDs made in the late 2000s. He said he would go through it and report back. But then he went dark and didn’t read my messages.
So, I bought the DVD set on eBay. Then I had to buy an external CD drive, because who has one of those anymore? Then, I had to find a patch to make it work on Windows 11 because it was designed for a much earlier version.
Anywho, $100 later and some ethical hacking later, I now had a digital version of every Rolling Stone issue, including the classified section.
I started in 1980. Combing over every classified section, looking for anything Beatles-related. I looked for a drawing of the shirt – but just to be sure, I also scanned the text-only ads.
The whole process was super time-consuming. RS was bi-monthly, so I had 24 issues to go over for each year. I would often commit to one or two issues a day or chance getting a splitting headache looking over the tiny print.
By 1985, I hadn’t found the ad I was looking for. I just figured perhaps it was later in the 80s.
Then, sadly, the ’90s hit, and still no ad.
The 90s was still fun. I started to get hopeful around 1997, thinking maybe Jack’s memory was off – and the date of the CA number indicated he did this that year or the year after. But by 2000, still nothing.
From 1995 to 2000 there was a big drop-off in t-shirt ads in the classifieds. People migrated to the lawless World Wide Web to peddle their unlicensed tees. The classifieds were being taken over by 1-800 numbers, personals, and discreet encounter ads. Closer to 2000 ads for t-shirts were just web addresses.
So what now? Well, I started going in reverse from 1979, back. Thinking that MAYBE, it was in the last few years of the 1970s. Even though that tag definitely had an 80s vibe to it.
At this point, I was losing hope, but I pressed on, all the way back to 1967. I knew it wouldn’t be there, but why quit now? Plus, I wanted to get the full scope of t-shirts sold via this magazine.
But after going through every copy’s classified section over two weeks, sadly, there was no trace of the ad.
I came up empty-handed yet again. But man, was it a treasure trove of all types of t-shirts that I’ll reveal in a future post.
Here’s a small sampling of the Beatles merch ads I spotted along the way. The Beatles Butcher album cover t-shirt ad is interesting, likely proves that not all of the ones that have surfaced are official. Somewhere out there, there’s a snobby Beatles collector with a bootleg in his collection, and he doesn’t even realize it.
This page contains a form, you can see it here
So why did Jack send me on this wild goose chase? As I learned from the first account of this t-shirt – people’s memories aren’t very accurate. We’re talking over 40 years now. Maybe Jack considered putting an ad in RS but perhaps chose another magazine. The fact that he remembered everything about the shirt’s origins but couldn’t say if it was multiple ads or who was on the cover might mean the ad never actually got placed in Rolling Stone.
I only scanned the last 10 pages; maybe he ponied up for a more expensive ad in the front? But he did specify classifieds, and it was the perfect place for a t-shirt like this.
Of course, if he’s reading this – he would say “You missed it.” I guess that’s possible. But given how careful I was, I’m in no rush to go through it again.
The other curious thing – the only two copies of these shirts known to exist are both in Canada. If sold via RS, chances are – one will surface somewhere from the U.S.A. at some point. I considered that there may have been a Canadian version of RS, with a unique set of classified, but I found multiple ads in the classifieds for other Canadian-based businesses. I also couldn’t definitively figure out if there was a Canada-specific one. Still, even if it does exist, it would be another needle in a haystack, especially since I won’t have the convenience of the DVD set.
So until another one of these comes to light, from the USA, I’ll avoid the literal headache of giving the RS CD archive another look.
My final order of business is to investigate the CA number and find out if there’s any historical data on the CA number, a reason as to why it would say 1997 if it had been issued earlier. So, I reached out to the Canadian government via email.
It appears there’s only a one-time fee of $100 for registering a CA number. But, there is a way to update a CA number, should a company need to update their information, mailing address, etc., and perhaps if that process is carried out, the date it’s issued gets altered.
Until then, I can’t officially prove it’s any older than 1997, yet I strongly suspect it’s a product of the 1980s.
After a 20-minute call with the competition bureau from Canada, the amazingly helpful representative was certain that the issue date is, in fact, the date it was created, and it doesn’t get updated if the company updates its information.
He did say it’s entirely possible the labels were applied to the garment years after the item was made, but the labels were from 1997 or earlier.
At that point, I circled back to Jack and explained that the CA number on the tag, attached to the shirt, was first issued in 1997.
But he remained confident when I asked again when the shirt was made.
“In the 1980s but maybe a new CA number as I sold the company.”
This still didn’t add up, and truthfully, as much as I wanted to write this off as a lapse in memory, it didn’t entirely seem realistic that this shirt was from the late 1990s.
So I started digging further into CA numbers and decided to focus on another Canadian-based brand and see what issue dates they featured.
The first one that came to mind was Tiger Brand. This brand has a long history, it’s like Canada’s Fruit of the loom, starting off making underwear in 1883. One hundred years later they rode the wave of the t-shirt explosion.
I punched in the CA number into the database and look what I got…
It says 1997 too! We know this has to be an error; this company was around before CA numbers even existed. Not only does it have the same year as Tour De Force, but it has the same month and day.
It appears as though we’ve stumbled upon some glitch with the Canadian government’s records. Below each record is a link to report errors, so I emailed them detailing what I had found.
A few days later I got this response.
“Dear J. Defunkd: Thank you for your inquiry regarding CA03978. As per your request, we can confirm that CA03978 was issued in June, 1977. Please note that CA Identification Number records can only confirm the date a number was issued to a company and would not necessarily correspond to the date a specific line of consumer textile articles was created or designed.”
So, after 10 years of investigating this t-shirt, here’s what we can finally be sure of:
- This is not a licensed Beatles T-Shirt, it’s a bootleg.
- This is a throwback t-shirt, it was not manufactured in the 1960s.
- It was sewn in China, but distributed by a company in Canada, specifically Montreal.
- Only two of these t-shirts have surfaced, both in Canada.
- The CA number on the tag was first issued in June of 1977.
- The t-shirt can safely be described as 1980s, roughly 40 years old, so it is authentic vintage.
But more importantly, lots of lessons were learned along the way.
- We can’t always authenticate a t-shirt when we can’t find anything to compare it to.
- We can not rely on people’s memories or stories, especially when the point of reference is decades old.
- Even a government record should be questioned and double-checked.
- Be patient; more information can come forward at any time. Sometimes, you just have to Let it Be.
Even if it had turned out to be from 1965, the journey was definitely more important than the destination.
If you have one of these t-shirts or any information about them featured in an ad, please contact us.