Vintage T-Shirt Forum & Community Authentication Appraisals

Hi All,
I’m looking for some help with a difficulty arising after a recent Ebay sale involving 4 tee's. I have listed a bundle of shirts from my own collection of UK Brockum Originals, Mostly Metallica/Megadeth. After the sale, on arrival of the shirts the buyer is querying the authenticity and has become a little hostile, claiming that they are cheap Asian knockoffs and almost immediately lodging a Paypal dispute? At first I thought he was kidding me, because he seemed pretty decent to deal with, but it now appears not. Can anyone help me with authenticating the labels. Pics below as included in the listings for the 4 shirts in question. I know all of my tee’s are legitimately bought and each their own history, a majority of my collection bear only these types of label (as pictured below). Hope someone can help…

T-SHIRT 1 Megadeth Vic and Shield T-SHIRT 2 Metallica Ride the Lightning T-SHIRT 3 Megadeth Rust in Peace T-SHIRT 4 Megadeth Symphony of Destruction I can add more pics or list in individual posts if preferred.

From what I've been told by a former merch dealer who worked in the 80s and 90s - Brockum and the other 90s heavy weight licensed brands that emerged in the 90s - did not manufacture their own t-shirts. They used Fruit of the Loom blanks - and had their tags sewn in.

So when on the road, in countries other than the US - instead of lugging around 1000 lbs of pre-printed cotton tees - they would just bring the screens or the artwork - and purchase blanks and print on the road. So the tag branding didn't always sync as they weren't dealing with their usual merch and the sewing in of the tags would fall by the wayside.

They look fine to me, legit and true vintage.

I'm assuming the tags were shown in the listing - why is the buyer coming back with this now?

I've had many legit shirts with that label. Always Euro tour shirts. The reason I understand for these being on euro blanks has to do with the crazy high import taxes artists would have to pay to bring the shirts with them across borders. Cheaper to just get them printed in that country.

Hi waxandthreads, thanks for weighing in on this one. I'm hoping that this transaction will have a safe outcome, I'll post more info when it plays out. I believe my shirts are on the way back to me. Not sure what was going on with the buyer. I am based in Ireland and most of my shirts were from UK or Irish gigs. Looks like there may be 3 or 4 possible labels that appear from concerts in this part of the world, putting together a list and some pics I hope to add to this post shortly as a resource for again.

Nice shirts! When you get them back, send the buyer a link to this thread...to prove to him that he's an idiot. Then block him. On Ebay, the seller has little recourse. I just had a shirt with a $200 bid...that got sniped at the last second...then the sniper didn't pay and ignored all contact. I couldn't leave him a negative without foregoing the refund (sold again for only $100..so that schmuck cost me $120 bucks ..though I was probably the schmuck for not re-listing it higher). In your case, I'd forget it and relist...unless he leaves you a negative. In that case I'd take the nice gloves off.

Hey fiftyfiftyman,
Your timing is impeccable! Thankfully, I got the shirts back last week and relisted on Ebay last night! I got burnt for about $60 dollars all in all, between postage and exchange rates on the refund to Paypal, sterling went nuclear over the last few weeks! Not great for one of my first ‘Sales’ I’m only a collector and not a business (although, I think my buyer had visions of me running a screen print workshop from a garden shed in Connemara, knocking out bootlegs!), but it could have been worse… I think the guy knew all along that they were authentic shirts, he pitched his deal perfectly, priced a fair offer, had great communication and had good feedback on his profile for a few large items. All seemed sound until he got the shirts. Immediately he was hostile without any negotiation and was rude and abusive in his emails. He claimed he didn’t even look at the pictures in the listing, but bought off the back of my positive profile (who would look at a sellers profile and not bother to review the listing?).
My biggest worry was his threat that counterfeit shirts by rules would be held with the intention to be destroyed and that his money would be returned without question. At this point it is worth mentioning that Paypal put any fears that I had to rest. Their customer service was second to none and I was reassured that they would not stand for anything going on behind the scenes when I explained the situation, and commended me for offering a refund. If something went wrong they were prepared to reverse the claim and chase the buyer on my behalf (Sellers have rights too!). I could have gone down the route of arguing the toss to prove authenticity or offer a goodwill discount, as was the route I initially was going to take, but figured after sound advice (thanks J!) cut the loss and get your stuff back. I’d been out of town for a few days and he even had the cheek to start emailing me to collect the shirts from the post office when I missed the delivery, despite the fact it took him nearly a week to get to the post office himself & send them back!
I’m not a fan of trolling, but do believe that what goes around comes around and I’m sure the buyer will get caught out at some stage, I just hope no-one else gets caught up in whatever it is he is trying to accomplish and loses out worse than I did. I’m not sure if his intention all along was to claim counterfeit, keep the shirts and stiff the payment though a claim. But I do think that either something underhanded was intended or he had a bad case of cold feet and went all the wrong way about it. It nearly put me off and I was hesitant enough to try and start selling my collection on Ebay initially anyway. Needless to say he’s on the blocked list and quite comically already seems to be watching the relisted items!
At the end of the day, I’m not going to bother going back out to him, he had enough of my time already, his loss will be someone else’s gain and I’m pretty sure he’s following this link anyway. Thanks to the users of this site for rallying round with this one, it really is a great community and your help and support is really appreciated, hope I can return the favour someday.

Sorry about your misfortunes. I too would take the lesson & move on. I agree with you about Paypal's customer service. My account got hacked & wiped out twice within a month (like an idiot I logged in on a Radisson wi-fi account while in the Philippines), but they tracked the transaction and credited my account both times. You can learn a whole lot of lessons about the world on the internet without even trying