Vintage T-Shirt Forum & Community Authentication Appraisals

An interesting discussion popped up on a Legiteem8 posting about what determines whether something Passes or Fails on the app. The shirt in question is a Jesus and Mary Chain / Japan Tour 1992. It's clear from the tag that it's not from 1992, but sometime later in the 90s or maybe early 00s. So the shirt is not a "first edition" vintage tee that dates to the period of the tour, but it is still "vintage" because pretty much everybody thinks of pre-2000 and even early 00s as vintage. So should this pass or fail? And, the shirt is most likely a legitimate repro, so would that make any difference as to whether it passes or fails?

My feeling is that part of the confusion is a lack of terminology. I think we're missing an equivalent term to the book collecting world's "first edition" or "first state," so we use the term "vintage" to mean two different things:

1) old or before a certain arbitrary year. At this point that seems to be everything before 2005 or thereabouts (although I've seen ebay listings that say Vintage 2022!!).

2) old and dating roughly to the time of the event, tour, show, etc. So, in this case, a "true" vintage tee of this Jesus and Mary Chain would be from 1992.

Anyway, just curious what people think.

Yeah, agree we need to add some variables as you mentioned.

"Licensed Reprint"
"Vintage Bootleg"

We are toying with the idea of making the comments field required if an item fails, or at least having a drop-down as to why they failed it.

That way someone could say, "this is still technically vintage but it's not an original."

Defining vintage is tricky as some people think it's only 10 years.

That all sounds good. I guess your understanding of what should pass is the same as mine -- something that is both vintage age-wise and "original" in the sense that it dates to the time of the event, tour, etc.

But I could see where the confusion is for this user (weerez) because he felt like his shirt was not fake or illegitimate, so why wouldn't it pass?

His shirt was passed, by the way, which it wouldn't be if my two part standard was applied.

Maybe there could be a designation that would show up in the Pass/Fail indicator itself? So it would end up on the thumbnail Like Pass/Original 100% (or whatever term) or Pass/Reproduction 100%. Maybe that would make it too complicated?

Good suggestions....will take some tinkering with for sure. Some people list their shirt as 80s when its actually 90s, that type of thing. So many varables!