Take a stroll down West Maple Road in downtown Birmingham, Michigan, about 20 miles northwest of downtown Detroit, and you’ll find a small boutique store that looks like boxes in your parents’ attic that have been rummaged through, dusted off and turned into an exhibition.
This is ABC Vintage, where Detroit sports history and fashion collide with Big Bang curiosity, and it’s home to what is likely the largest collection of vintage Detroit sportswear in the world.
“Vintage never goes out of style,” says Joey Skinn, manager of ABC Vintage. “It’s the one thing in fashion that never goes out of style.”
Co-owned by Aaron Cohen and Mike Pang, you can always find forgotten, lost and unique clothing from Detroit’s big four professional sports teams, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and other sports teams, musicians and movies.
“Sports pieces,” as vintage enthusiasts like to call them, were created in the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, or early 2000s by big-name clothing companies like Chalk Line or Starter, or fashion designers like Jeff Hamilton. Others are “bootlegs” from that era: clothing that illegally used sports team logos or variations of them, made by everyday people and sold out of car trunks or hung on nearby fences when big sporting events were held in cities.
Aaron Cohen, co-owner of ABC Vintage in Birmingham, Michigan, holds a bootleg Michigan State University basketball T-shirt from the 2000s. (Courtesy of James L. Edwards III)
ABC Vintage has over 200 vintage items each for the Lions, Pistons, Red Wings and Tigers for sale in storefronts and hidden locations, and the store highlights certain teams over others depending on the season.
Current and former Detroit players personally source items at ABC, buying rare vintage pieces from their current teams and other teams in the city. Earlier this month, wives and girlfriends of Detroit Lions players enjoyed a private vintage shopping experience. Athletes who come to the Motor City for their league schedules, like Flint’s Kyle Kuzma, also stop by. Touring musicians, including Zach Bryan and Fred Durst, trade with ABC for unique items to wear onstage that night. They also support artists such as Adam Levine of Maroon 5 and rapper Russ. Local Detroit rappers, including Babytron, Babyface Ray and 42 Dugg, are frequent visitors.
Cohen and the staff at ABC Vintage don’t find these rare items alone; the majority of their inventory comes from local collectors and consignors that Cohen works with and considers “the best in the Midwest.” These vintage diggers find their “holy grail” pieces in warehouses, abandoned houses, thrift stores, basements and attics across the country, and sometimes have connections to people who were directly involved with Detroit sports teams of the time.
“There are so many creative ways to access material from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s,” Cohen said.
Sometimes it’s easier to find rare pieces.
For example, just before the Lions entered the playoffs last season, Cohen stumbled across an Internet find: a blue Lions varsity jacket from the late 1980s or early 1990s for sale on eBay. It was one of the rarest items he’d ever seen: The jacket looked similar to the one Eddie Murphy wore in the movie “Beverly Hills Cop,” except that the base color was blue instead of black.
Ironically, around this time, Cohen and his staff were selling a 1980s Lions jacket, the exact same one Murphy wore in Beverly Hills Cop, to a local customer for $750. Produced by Chalk Line, the jacket’s beige leather sleeve has “Team NFL” sewn on one and an “NFC” badge on the other. There’s an embroidered Lions helmet on the front and an even larger helmet on the back with “Detroit Lions” pinned on it.
Aaron Cohen, co-owner of ABC Vintage in Birmingham, Michigan, holds a vintage Chalk Line jacket from the 1990s. (Courtesy of James L. Edwards III)
Cohen was surprised to see the seller only offer $199, the retail price at the time. He assumed it was a fake because prices for vintage Lions clothing have nearly quadrupled since the franchise reached the NFC Championship Game last season after going 0-16 for the first time in NFL history and never winning a playoff game in 31 years. He was surprised someone would list that particular item for that price, knowing the demand and lack of supply for something that old in the current vintage market.
“It was an incredible story,” Cohen recalled.
Cohen, not wanting the slightest bit of doubt to pass up such a rare find, messaged the seller, who told him the jacket had been sold at a Pace Membership Warehouse in the ’90s — the store we now know as Sam’s Club. Cohen took him at his word and arranged for Skin to meet the gentleman 40 miles away to check the size tag, stitching, product licensing, and other telltale signs that the item was “real” or “fake.”
What happened after Skinn met the man selling the jacket still amazes everyone at ABC Vintage.
“He showed me what we came to buy, and it was right,” Skinn said. “As I was leaving, he said, ‘Just so you know, I still have a couple of these jackets left. I bought them for my boys, but they didn’t want them.’ I couldn’t believe it. I got in the car, called Aaron and told him the jacket was perfect.”
Back of a 1990s Chalk Line Lions jacket. (Courtesy of James L. Edwards III)
ABC Vintage also has items so rare that they don’t know what to do with them, like test pressings and typos that never should have seen the light of day. A vintage T-shirt stored in the basement and not yet made for sale looks on the surface like a teal-era Pistons piece from the 1990s. But look at the back and you’ll see a picture of the Lions quarterback throwing a pass to a wide receiver.
Nearby is a black Pistons T-shirt with a caricature of Rick Mahorn but with “Joe Dumas” written underneath, and on the back is a caricature of Vinnie “The Microwave” Johnson with his name spelled correctly, but when the shirt is turned inside out, there is a caricature of John “The Spider” Salley with his name spelled correctly.
“I don’t even know what to put a price on something like this,” Cohen said with a laugh.
Prices for rare vintage items can be intimidating to the uninitiated. Prices for vintage hats, shirts, sweatshirts, and jackets at ABC Vintage range from $30 to several hundred dollars. Today, bootleg items from the ’80s and ’90s can fetch hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars on the resale market due to their rarity.
The average person might laugh at the $650 price tag for a smelly, 30-year-old Chalk Line Lions jacket that Cohen stumbled across and bought for about $200. But vintage connoisseurs know how price is determined by an item’s rarity, condition, number of patches, leather trim, whether a clothing company made it, and are willing to pay whatever it takes to acquire what many in the field consider to be works of art. Nearly all of the items ABC Vintage carries are in fair to excellent condition, despite their age.
“For me, the first vintage T-shirt that made me think it was cool was a 50 Cent shirt,” says Mitch Mulcahy, a 25-year-old salesman at ABC Warehouse and vintage enthusiast. “It was one of the first rap songs I ever heard, ‘In da Club’ by 50 Cent. I saw a shirt from that era and the original watermark with the year on it, and I thought that was cool.”
“I love fashion and I love dressing well. It all comes down to how cool the artwork is and how good the quality is. You can’t find anything that beats the quality of the shirts from that era, especially the way the fabric softens over time – the quality is amazing. You can’t replicate that kind of thing. I think that’s what makes vintage so special.”
“I may not have been around that time, but I can appreciate the crazy bootlegs and the artistry that went into them. I just don’t do that anymore.”
Framed Bob Probert memorabilia owned by Aaron Cohen, co-owner of ABC Vintage, which displays rare bootleg vintage items worn by Probert during games. (Courtesy of James L. Edwards III)
The bootleg skull-and-crossbones “Bad Boys” inspired Detroit Red Wings shirts that the late Bob Probert often wore under his jersey while playing for the NHL franchise in the late ’80s and early ’90s are not only nearly impossible to find, but even harder to find in good condition.
These items are no longer on hand and easily available — and even if they were, they don’t show up often on virtual marketplaces — but somehow, ABC Vintage has several of them in their vault.
This “Bad Boys” inspired fake Red Wings was frequently worn by Bob Probert and other Red Wings people who ABC Vintage keeps in-house. (Courtesy of James L. Edwards III)
“Some of them are priced that way because I don’t want them to sell right away,” Cohen says. “Yes, this is a business, and I want people to be in the pieces, but I also want to be able to tell a story in my store, and I want people to be able to find a second copy if possible, and it’s a marketing and promotional decision as well.
“If I was producing rare vintage Lions jackets every day, you might never get another one of those, specific ones, ones in good condition, ones with lots of patches, hits on the back, leather hits, etc.”
Vintage continues to grow in popularity. People seek out pieces to make a big profit. Some even dig to find a part of their childhood they thought they had lost. The beauty of the culture as a whole is in the eye of the beholder.
But in the Detroit area, ABC Vintage serves everyone who loves sports teams, their history and their fashion just as much as they do. The items in the store evoke memories, conversations and emotions. You can’t put a price on those things.
“It’s like art,” Skin says. “It’s wearable art.”
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