Welcome to Issue #2 of anyway, i sold it. My name is Amy and this newsletter is where I walk you through the finds, the research, and the final sale of stuff I sold online.

Today’s featured sale is a free t-shirt I pulled out of an old cardboard box in a dank basement, long forgotten along with everything else in the room. It’s the kind of thing most people would toss in the trash without a second thought.

The shirt is a men’s size XL, pre-owned, black Nike graphic tee commemorating the 1992 U.S. Men's Olympic basketball team, better known as the Dream Team. The front reimagines South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore* with the faces of four team members (all Naismith Hall of Famers) carved into the mountainside: Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, and Scottie Pippen.

The shirt was stuffed into a box with a couple of stained and torn Marlboro and Winston tees.** Unfortunately those two had too many deep stains and tears, so they didn’t make the cut. My best guess is that the shirts were set aside years ago to use as rags, and then forgotten.

You may have noticed that the shirt is splattered in blue paint, as it was clearly worn by someone on a paint job. Seems like a clear issue warranting rag status or a toss in the trash can. But I wasn’t actually worried about the sellability of the shirt, which I’ll come back to in a bit.

What to look for: Several indicators made this easy to date and authenticate as vintage. The subject matter is unmistakably from the early '90s. I was in elementary school when these players were popular, so I was familiar with a couple of their names and faces.

The fabric and sewing quality are also giveaways. First, it’s 100% cotton with a heavier feel, versus the thin poly-blend of a modern graphic tee. If you look at the sleeve and bottom, you can see that it’s sewn with a single stitch, another indicator of age and high quality. This type of stitching ceased in the early 90s alongside the outsourcing of clothing manufacturing to Central America and Asia, and a general decline in the quality of mass produced clothing.

Which relates to the final clue—both tags say Made in USA. I’m no expert on shirt tags, which you can go really deep on. There are many other tag details to look for, like manufacturer brands, woven vs print, old school logo design, etc. There’s an excellent guide at the end with an entire history of shirt and hat tags if you want to go down the rabbit hole.

About the condition: vintage graphic tees are super popular right now with Gen Z buyers who are in their teens and 20s, which is important for this particular shirt. If the design is rare and in demand, then the condition may not matter as much as you'd think.

This one had a few flaws: a couple of tiny holes and a small red stain lurking under the Dunkmore graphic. The doozy was the blue paint splattered mostly across the front, which I think actually adds some character. Luckily it didn’t obscure the image too much.

How I priced it: I searched eBay for "Mount Dunkmore shirt", which yielded roughly 15 active listings, all Buy It Now. Several were listed at $99, with an average of around $75, and a couple in the low $100s. A few of them had several watchers, indicating strong purchase interest (and likely some people keeping tabs on the competition.)

There was some variety in the colors and sleeve lengths, which I didn’t really pay attention to pricing-wise, nor did I look at the condition of the listings. I only ended up looking at a couple of them to double check the names of the players on the shirt. Otherwise, I didn’t do much research beyond this because I knew it would sell regardless of the condition.

The people out there searching for this shirt already know exactly what it is, so the item description was pretty brief. I included the year, brand, subject matter, size, specific measurements for length and chest, plus details about the flaws, and left it at that.

Checking sold comps, I found two at $50 + shipping and $45 + shipping, so I figured I’d get around $30 for mine. I ran it as an auction, knowing that I’d be satisfied with whatever price it fetched. I would also rather sell something quickly rather than sit on an item for 2 months for a few extra dollars. The time versus money tradeoff is something I consider for everything I sell, especially when I can use the money for an immediate need. I ended up getting 13 bids over a 7-day auction, starting at $9.99.

Yes. The shirt cost me nothing, and took maybe 25 minutes total to research, photograph, list, pack and ship from home through a USPS pick-up request. I’d call this a three-point swish.

I’ve mentioned before that I sell on eBay not just for the side cash, but also because it’s really satisfying to find, research, and sell cool stuff. There is so much to learn, and I think it’s pretty cool to have enough niche knowledge to look at a paint-splattered shirt in a box of would-be rags, and recognize that it isn't trash at all. I love knowing that some collector will genuinely appreciate having this shirt, or that another vintage seller will happily flip it in their own shop.

That’s it for today’s issue! Thanks for reading and feel free to reach out with any questions.

Amy

*A small aside that feels worth noting: the mountain we now call Mount Rushmore sits in the Black Hills, on the unceded land of the Lakota Sioux, who know it as Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, the Six Grandfathers.

** I recognized the cigarette brand shirts from those old proof-of-purchase programs where you'd save up the barcodes and send them in for branded merch like coolers and hats and lighters. They brought back a memory of my dad, a big time smoker, who religiously collected and submitted these in the 90s.