October 20, 2021
Grateful Dead Tee Sells for Nearly $18,000
It became the most expensive vintage rock T-shirt ever sold.
What a long, strange trip, indeed.
What was once counterculture sometimes makes for good capitalism as a Grateful Dead T-shirt just became the most expensive vintage rock T-shirt ever sold at auction, providing yet another example of how one day’s branded merchandise can become tomorrow’s iconic, pricey collectible.
The simple, yet psychedelic-themed yellow shirt, which dates to 1967, sold to collector Bo Bushnell for $17,640 through a Sotheby’s auction called “From the Vault: Property from the Grateful Dead.”
This 1967 Grateful Dead shirt sold for $17,640, setting a new record.
(Source: Sotheby’s)
Another Grateful Dead T-shirt in the auction sold for $15,120, making it the second most expensive vintage rock tee ever sold at auction. That shirt is from a spring 1977 Grateful Dead tour, Thrillist reported. It features the Dead’s famous “Steal Your Face” logo, which shows a lightning bolt flashing through the elongated top of a skull.
The T-shirts in the auction were expected to sell for between $350 and $700.
This Grateful Dead shirt sold at the same auction for $15,120.
(Source: Sotheby’s)
The previous most expensive retro rock T-shirt? A Led Zeppelin tee from 1979 that sold for about $10,000.
Dan Healy, an audio engineer who worked with the Dead, included the two top-selling tees in the Sotheby’s auction, according to Thrillist. Believed to be one of the first mass-produced Grateful Dead shirts, the 1967 tee was designed by Allan “Gut” Terk, an artist and member of the Hells Angels motorcycle club.
It was the connection to Terk that compelled Bushnell to pay the $17,640 price tag, plus another nearly $2,000 for fees and other expenses (for a total of $19,315), to make the shirt part of his collection. Bushnell operates the Outlaw Archive, which houses 1960s motorcycle club artifacts and ephemera that celebrate what’s described as California outlaw culture. Terk was a centerpiece figure in that culture.
“We just did this to keep the memory of #GutTerk alive and to keep his history together under one roof,” a post on the Outlaw Archive Instagram page read.
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