Who Knew A$AP Rocky would rock the “Land of The Free” shirt? Just kidding. We know the picture is fake. BUT if you’ve been inside any thrift store ever, you probably have seen the “Land Of The Free, Home Of The Brave” shirt on the racks. This shirt is seemingly everywhere, and is one of the most frequent items donated to thrift stores. For the past 2-3 years, vintage collectors and resellers have seen these shirts pop up frequently in thrift stores, with some stores carrying 50-100 of these shirts at a time.

Yesterday, a member of the vintage community, ExclusiveHypeLincoln, posted in a Facebook Group called Thrift Flips with a picture of a “Land of The Free” Shirt being sold at a thrift store for $35. Yes. $35 USD. Thrift stores have been taxing on prices for vintage items in the recent years, as thrifting and vintage becomes more and more popular. However, the “Land of The Free” shirt really isn’t anything special, and it doesn’t scream “VINTAGE” like other items on the racks at thrift stores. Now, its no surprise that Goodwill and other thrift stores are starting to Google items to find out their true values. Thrift stores can now easily search for sold comps on Ebay/Grailed/Poshmark and start up-charging for vintage items that would have been priced lower otherwise. So how did this thrift store come to the $35 price tag for the shirt??

Well, theres a history with these shirts. Like I said before, the shirt is somewhat of a meme within the vintage community. Everyone knows about it, and everyone pretty much unanimously hates the shirt. That being said, it became a meme in Facebook Groups like Thrift Central and IG accounts to start posting the shirt and pretending like it was a grail. People would really take this seriously to the point that new people entering the vintage community would wonder if the shirt actually had value to it. It started to get out of hand, and users would eventually get banned for even posting the shirt to forums. Even if you search the tee now, you’ll see the infamous fake picture of ASAP Rocky wearing the shirt and hundreds of online listings for the shirt (even a Grailed listing for $100)!

So essentially what started as a meme within the vintage community, has now stumped a thrift store employee into thinking the shirt actually has value. If no one was buying those shirts at regular thrift store prices theres no way in hell that someone pays up $35 for it.