relix.auction

October 31, 1991 was the last Halloween the Dead ever played: the final night of a four-show Oakland run that began just two days after Bill Graham, the promoter who shaped the band's history in this building, was killed in a helicopter crash. Ken Kesey came onstage during a "Dark Star" that turned into an elegy for him, and the band closed the night with "Werewolves of London," the last time they ever covered it.Named-run shirts like this one were made for a specific handful of nights and sold to the people who were there. There is no national print run behind them.A couple of dark stains near the collar and shoulder seams, visible in photos; graphic and tie-dye colors otherwise intact.Fair · Tie-dye.As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

$200-500

$500+

Under $200

1991 Grateful Dead Halloween Oakland Tie-Dye T-Shirt, Size L

Twenty-four vintage Grateful Dead t-shirts — tour shirts, city-specific one-offs, tie-dyes, a local-crew-only shirt never sold to the public, and a design the band pulled and destroyed before it ever reached a show.This collection documents the remarkable growth and development of the Dead's scene as they emerged from the 1970s and made the road their home in the 1980s, claiming all America as their stage. Tour shirts are art, history, and more, talismens&nbsp;of how the band turned every concert into a work of art. This collection traces how Dead t-shirts came to be one of the most artistic and evocative signs of the band's identity, art that reminds us all of the transformative nature of the Grateful Dead. This auction offers a selection of shirts never collected together in this condition and range.Every lot is individually photographed front, back, and tag, with condition called out honestly in each listing — vintage pieces are graded on their own terms, and high-grade doesn't mean flawless. See each item's photos for the full visual record.No reserve. Every lot opens at $49.95.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

A Fall Tour 1988 shirt built around a jester's skull, bold graffiti-style lettering carrying the tour name and date worked directly into the design rather than listed separately underneath.Black shirt, bold color separation in red, yellow, and blue against the black ground.Hanes Beefy-T, graphic sharp with no cracking.Size L · Mint.As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

1988 Grateful Dead Fall Tour T-Shirt — Jester Skull, Size L

Rick Griffin's artwork for the band's planned run through Miami, St. Petersburg, New Orleans, Houston, and Dallas paired the tour's crossed-sabers-and-skull imagery with a Confederate battle flag background.Before the shirts reached a single show, the band pulled the design and had the run destroyed rather than sell an image built on the Confederate flag to their own audience. Very few copies escaped that recall. It's a strange kind of collectible: not valuable because the band got something right, but because they caught themselves getting something wrong and acted on it immediately, not after the fact.Rick Griffin's daughter, Flaven Griffin-Clayton, has said her father grew up on pirate movies, old Westerns, and Civil War pictures where the Confederate flag stood in as visual shorthand for "the South" — the same reflex he used elsewhere in his work, a surfer for California, King Kong for New York. By her account he likely reached for it as the nearest symbol at hand for a Southern tour shirt, without thinking through what it represented, and she has said the family is glad it never went into circulation.Hanes Beefy-T, full color intact front and back.Size L · Mint · Withdrawn design, rare survivor.As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

1988 Grateful Dead Southern Tour T-Shirt — Rick Griffin, Size L

The Wall of Sound was the band's own PA system for the 1974 tour, hundreds of speakers stacked behind the stage so the music reached the crowd without a delay tower in front of them. It cost a fortune to move and was retired after that tour, but it stayed the reference point for what the Dead were willing to try.The "XXV" on the back places this shirt to 1990, the band's 25th anniversary, looking back at the Wall rather than being sold at the 1974 shows themselves. The Oneita tag, pre-shrunk cotton, made in USA, size M (38-40), fits that dating.There's a small hole at the underarm seam where the sleeve meets the body, pictured for reference; the front and back graphics are otherwise clean.Size M · Good As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

1990 Grateful Dead Wall of Sound Commemorative T-Shirt, Size M

Boston Garden hosted the Dead for decades before the building was replaced, and by September 1991 the room had its own particular relationship with the band, well-worn, loud, and reliably sold out.Chris Pinkerton's graphic plays it straight for the building's other tenant: a skeleton dribbling a basketball, worked into a full tie-dye spiral of orange, black, and blue-purple that wraps front to back with the Grateful Dead wordmark arcing around it.There is some staining and discoloration within the dye, visible on close inspection; the artwork and color saturation are otherwise strong.Size XL · Excellent · Tie-dye.As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

1991 Grateful Dead Boston Garden Tie-Dye T-Shirt — Basketball Playing Skeleton, Size XL

New Year's Eve with the Grateful Dead in Oakland was the hardest ticket of the year, balloons at midnight, Bill Graham's traditions carried forward after his death, and a Bay Area crowd that treated it as a civic holiday.The year carried extra weight: Garcia had collapsed with heart problems that August, forcing the band to cancel an 18-date fall tour. He returned to the stage that December, and by New Year's Eve the band was closing out the year it had nearly not finished.NYE shirts are their own collecting sub-category, and this is a strong one.Size L · Near Mint · Tie-dye.As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

1992 Grateful Dead New Year's Eve Oakland Tie-Dye T-Shirt, Size L

By 1993 the Garden run was a fixture of the New York fall, a stretch of nights when the Dead effectively took over midtown and Deadheads from three states organized their year around it.Tie-dyed MSG shirts from the nineties runs sit near the top of the New York category, and the good ones do not surface often in this condition.Dye saturated and print sharp.Size XL · Mint · Tie-dye.As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

1993 Grateful Dead Madison Square Garden Tie-Dye T-Shirt, Size XL

The 1993 Fall Tour frog, another entry in the Dead's long habit of putting an animal where a skull would do, and letting the audience decide what it means.Fall tours were the East Coast season: arenas from Boston down through the Carolinas, cold parking lots, and shirts bought partly because you needed another layer.Size XL · Mint.As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

1993 Grateful Dead Fall Tour T-Shirt — Frog Design, Size XL

The Dead's Vermont dates were the sort of event a small state does not forget: an open field near the Canadian border, a crowd many times the size of the nearest town, and a tape-trader's summer story for years afterward.Designed by Jester, and made for that run specifically.Strong, unfaded color throughout.Size XL · Near Mint As with any vintage garment, please expect minor signs of age even in high-grade pieces — see photos for a full visual record.Domestic shipping is $20 per item. International shipping will be calculated and invoiced separately after the auction closes.

1991 Grateful Dead Halloween Oakland Tie-Dye T-Shirt, Size L

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