Josh has been collecting vintage Bob Marley tees for about five years. He's a huge Marley fan and has been since he was a child. His father mostly played reggae at home so Bob was the soundtrack to his life while growing up.
"My family’s dog is named Marley and I just got a puppy myself about three months ago. I named him Ziggy after one of Bob’s sons. I’ve always been into fashion too so it was only a matter of time until the two things collided," Josh told us.
Marley tees are the only genre he collects and has over 60 t-shirts at the moment. While the majority of his collection is from the 1980s and 90s he's always on the hunt for 1970s tees.
"I try to find tees from before 1981 which is when Bob died. I have around 4-5 right now which are all too tight for me to wear but they are never going up for sale. They're more like a piece of history to me. One of them is a Kaya album promo shirt which some members of the wailers have been photographed wearing while standing with Bob," Josh said.
Original 70s Marley tees aside, Josh told us the Buffalo Soldier rap tee seems to be most requested by customers since it's a well-known tune and the graphics are on point.
When asked about his approach to authenticating Marley tees Josh said, "Over the years that I’ve been collecting, I've naturally picked up on details to look for when determining the authenticity of Marley tees: stitching, tags, fade/condition of shirt vs fade/condition of graphic, placement, and size of graphics. fortunately, I have not seen too many fakes but there are plenty out there. I think there hasn’t been a huge effort into creating fake Marley tees for a few reasons. One is that there are so many different vintage Marley tee designs so it’s not like there are a select few that are grails such as some other artists or genres. Another reason is that at the moment Marley's tees are not as valuable as some other artists. So the fakes that I have seen have been pretty obvious to me."
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