Snake America Sixty Five
Snake is a bi-weekly email newsletter covering after-market goods, often on eBay. This week: Completed items. If you are not reading this as email, consider doing so.
eBay: Utensilo, 1960s, cream, unsold, $400: This is an Italian cutlery holder from the 1960s that is so impressive it not only forces the issue of spending money on dedicated fork-and-knife storage into reappraisal, it reinforces the whole business of spending money on unnecessary things outright. If you don't have a hole in your roof ... how can you not buy this? What a thing to have up on your wall! I guess a downside is you'd need to get better silverware. Or worse silverware. This Utensilo comes in different colors, and there are newly-produced ones, but they don't look the same and are trash. Maybe if they were duller. But the shiny plastic is gaudy. I'm not sure what goes in the corner triangle pocket. Maybe notes, or a sponge or pumice stone. Anyone who says money can't buy happiness isn't wrong, but also isn't looking for the right things. Being the only person you know with one of these will keep you going for at least a week.
Nike Bruins, 1981, low-tops, sold, $500: "These are the same style of sneakers," says the seller, "worn by Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in Back to the Future (see film screenshot photo, USA 1985)." That's not all the way true--the above-mentioned are not only the same style of sneaker, but in fact the same sneaker model McFly, who travels back in time and plays an Agnostic Front-ish guitar solo at prom after getting propositioned by his mother, wears in the film.
The seller says as much: "If you do Cosplay as Marty McFly and are all about authenticity, these would be the perfect shoes for you!" Which is not correct, since McFly's shoes were pretty filthy. The high sale price here is wild since Nike's 1980s genius tends not to be appreciated by bidders, but good on the two parties involved in this auction(1). These are showroom condition, if there were showrooms of old Nike sneakers. The little ridges around the tongue and the plastic feathers, or whatever they're called, on the front of the toe's outsole, are all there. That stuff disappears if the shoe's been worn once. It'd be crazy to think McFly may have put these shoes on ice for even a day. The 81 in the barcode in the shoe is the date of production--filming began early in 1985, I believe. In the photo above, they look like they have been worn for four years. There's even some ollie abrasion on his heel. Maybe he landed some during those four years. Eric Stoltz was supposed to play McFly but did not. Lea Thompson, who starred opposite Stoltz and Lee Ving and Chris Penn and Rick Moranis and other actors in The Wild Life, (USA 1984), a masterpiece of American film, played McFly's mom, the one who tries to make love to him. The movie hit theaters 30 years ago this Friday. It'd be funny if it was 1985 now and McFly went back into the past and wore saddle shoes or something stupid.
eBay: Big John jeans, 1967, sold, $60: Man, what are these? Tthe seller, awesomeguy_75, furnishes this description: VINTAGE 1967 BIG JOHN M1002 PROTO MODEL JEANS. THIS IS THE FIRST MODEL THE JAPANESE COMPANY CREATED BUT WAS MADE IN THE USA. IN 1968 ALL PRODUCTION WAS IN JAPAN. MADE WITH 100% COTTON CONE FABRIC FROM CONE DENIM INC. NEW YORK N.Y. JEANS ARE NICE AND DARK THEY PHOTOGRAPH A BIT LIGHTER THAN THEY ARE. JEANS ARE IN GOOD VINTAGE CONDITION NO HOLES THERE ARE A COUPLE SPOTS ON RIGHT LEG(SEE PICS) JEANS LOOK GOOD. THEY HAVE HALF SELVAGE ,TALON ZIPPER, 5 STAR WREATH WAIST BUTTON, SINGLE STITCH BACK POCKETS.
Not bad. I have never heard of these. They look recent but there's a chance they aren't. The lore is Japanese collectors and industrialists took the denim looms from shuttered American factories to Japan in the 1990s. Some shipped over earlier--Evisu started as Evis, Levi's minus the E, in the late 1980s--but the flood came in the 1990s. Those looms were narrower and made the jeans' outseams selvaged. If the seller is right, BIG JOHN jeans were produced even earlier than that. "IN 1968 ALL PRODUCTION WAS IN JAPAN." Per its web site, Big John began producing jeans in Japan in 1965. The jean here, the Prot0 model, is from 1967. But what of the above-mentioned? Is its PRODUCTION IN JAPAN? The photo of the tag says otherwise:
America. The country code in the tag is 066, which is Thailand. What's going on here? Who's colluding? Big John shuttered in the '90s and began making jeans again in 2009. Are these from then or then? They're not 1967. But still pretty cool, though. Recommended.
eBay: Beatles henley shirt, with their faces on it, sold, $200: My friend Zack asked me while this auction was active whether the above-mentioned was the first piece of band merchandise ever made. One has to imagine it was early in the going. A guardian.com article on the subject, which references REM in its lede, offers the following:
Names of groups started popping up on children's clothes in the mid-60s, an extension of the trend for comic book T-shirts in Mad magazine. The Beatles and the Dave Clark Five were early adopters, two bands that understood merchandising.
Nice to see another feather in Mad Magazine's cap(2). Whoever was first to discover that bands and singers could profitably sell T-shirts bearing their likenesses was sitting on a golden egg. It'd have been pretty funny if The Carter Family or Robert Johnson were selling boiled wool sweaters out of the backs of their Model T's when they toured, or something. Are these Beatles shirts Hamburg-era? Did they come up with the idea to sell T-shirts halfway through their 11-month residency in the world's worst port town? Did they pay money for sex and get business advice? Who's getting ripped off here? Great shirt, though. Better when not worn with a bowl cut, or dress shoes and athletic socks. All the T-shirts for bands produced since have been better, especially if they say Alien Sex Fiend on them. I think this is the biggest size these shirts came in.
Thanks for reading.
Snake
Last Snake: Fake Peter Max burger safety ad, Cornell sweater from the 1930s (sold; relisted)
Last Snake: 1940s moleskin coveralls, felt hats (sold; ended)
(1) Levi's from the 1940s generally sell for as much as they're worth. So do Rolexes, comic books, cool old dolls, etc.
(2) Apologies for the music analogy ... a good way to see this is that Mad Magazine did for band T-shirts what Empire did to Washington, DC's music scene during the mid-1980s.