Defunkd

[Johnny65]

Check it out everyone! Some really nice rare pieces from this seller. Looks like someone scored some deadstock boxes of samples from an old screen print shop from the 70's.

Damn! What I wouldn't give to be the person that found this stuff.

http://bit.ly/bk1iUk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The deadstock 1978 Black Sabbath is pretty amazing! Cool provenance about the printing process and how it was too time consuming during production. This piece hope fully finds it's was into a museum. I'm sure it's one of the very first printed of this highly sought after tee.

http://bit.ly/dpuzdp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[CRAZYBUBBA]

They're in Texas, the mecca of vintage blanks. Is this really legit? It seems strange that someone would hold out so many years before starting to sell this stuff.

[Johnny65]

Well CRAZYBUBBA without actually being able to inspect all of the seller's tees first-hand, you're right. I cannot say with 100% certainty that these are all legit.

But honestly, who the hell would go to all that trouble to make such elaborate fakes. Being a screen printer for over 15 years I can tell you that the time, energy and money involved in printing multi-color t-shirts would definitely not make it worth the seller's time for the money he would make on a few shirts. Study the pics again. These are not one and two color repros from a desktop printer. Some of them are up to six colors and several of them have something called 4-color process printing and half-tones. Both very involved screen printing techniques.

Screen printing shops always keep samples of their work. I've been watching this seller for some time. In the last few months he's been selling deadstock drag racing tees from the 70's and 80's with graphics that are just too time consuming to reproduce for the price they're selling for. Originally some of the racing tees were still in unopened clear plastic bags the printer would have used for shipping to their client. When the seller was trying to auction these racing tees in the clear bags no one was buying. Once he opened the bags, took better pics and started listing size dimensions all his auctions took off. More evidence that the seller was just beginning to understand that he had something of value in all the old boxes of samples laying around his screen printing shop. The sharp creases and wrinkles in the tees are also consistent with a garment that has been stored for a very long time. The 1978 Foghat and 1979 Heart appear to be iron-ons but this is also consistent with a full service print shop as they would have printed the iron-on's for their client and then applied several to blank stock to show their customer the finished product. The sizes also indicate that these are real since the people out there producing fakes are not going to find so many clean and varying deadstock blanks in the medium and large sizes. My old shop has been in business since the early 70's and believe me there's an entire department designated for storage of just the deadstock samples they have printed over the years.

Additionally the fact that the seller was able to give provenance about the Black Sabbath tee is also an indication that these are in fact deadstock samples that have been boxed and stored for years. Keep in mind the average person out there, screen printers included, don't know there is a market for these old t-shirts. We just assume that everyone knows this. That's not the case. Vintage t-shirt collectors are a pretty small group of people compared to other types of collecting.

And lastly, I consider myself a bit of an expert in this area and would not post to the forum unless I felt they were real.

Hope that clears up any confusion.

[jimmyj]

wicked, thanks for that post john. I didn't realize you were an ex screen printer, if you ever want to scribe a guest post with tips from an ex screen printer, let me know!

[Johnny65]

Sounds good Jimmy.

I'll give some thought to what might be a worthwhile read for collectors and sellers.

[CRAZYBUBBA]

Wow, that was really informative. Thanks for the clarification.