Costacos Brothers Vintage Sports Posters

Recently, I found an amazing, door size Michael Jordan poster at an estate sale. It's in fantastic condition for being nearly 30 years old. I tossed around the idea of keeping it, but ultimately decided to sell it

As usual, I did a little research on it to insure that I price it accordingly. In doing so, I learned a lot about a couple of brothers who created an incredible business featuring famous sports figures of the late 80s and early 90s. Those brothers were the Costaco brothers. 

In Seattle, in the mid 80s, two brothers created a poster empire. They stood out by posing athletes in unorthodox scenes often times playing off their famous nick names. Like this one of Karl "The Mailman" Malone.

Instead of posters of athletes dunking or catching a football in an end zone, they played off of current pop culture and posed them as dynamic duos like Miami Vice, or in this case, "Chicago Vice."

Their poster company was a huge success. The following are a few more examples of some of the work they did that made them famous.

Recently, the brothers have come out of retirement with this new poster of Russell Wilson.

Watch the video below to learn more.

or visit their website

www.costacosbrothers.com

To see the Costacos brothers poster of Michael Jordan that is for sale in the shop, click the link below.

Michael Jordan poster on etsy 

Hello!

Just listed some totally rad 80s and 90s phones in the shop!

Watch the videos to hear their ring tones and be whisked away into a nostalgic feeling of wrapping yourself in a phone chord while talking to your junior high school boyfriend and listening to love song mix tapes.

buy it here

buy it here

buy it here

Use CAUTION when making 3-way calls, you could like totally turn your best friend into your worst enemy.

Ohhhh Snap!

Loads of new snapbacks are in the store! They are coming in, in record number over here. Check back often to get first dibs on the new stock. 

In the meantime, get a super coupon code for available snapbacks and
a sneak peek at what is coming soon.

I can't be the only one who thinks that wolf looks like "Moon Moon."
Buy it here.

This might not be the original meme, but you get the gist.

More wolves.
Buy it here.

More Alaska.
Buy it here.

Nothing like a good corduroy cap.
Buy it here.

coming soon...
leave a comment for FIRST DIBS

coming soon...
leave a comment for FIRST DIBS

Haunted Vintage

Some believe that a spirit or energy can attach itself to objects. I'm sure most of you have heard old ghost stories about this topic. I specifically remember one that my cousin told me about a wiji board that was possessed. She told me that her Mom threw it in the garbage and the next day, it mysteriously ended up back in her room. Her mom threw it in the garbage a few more times all with the same result. Finally, she burned it in a fire pit in the back yard. She thought that solved the problem and they would never see the wiji board again, but it still came back. This story frightened me immensely when I was a kid. I didn't know it at the time, but that was one of those urban legends. But, is it possible that physical items can be possessed by a spirit?
There is a show on syfy, called The Haunted Collector, that explores this subject. A group of people travel around seeking items that are reportedly haunted. Some of these items are then put in The Zaffis Museum of the paranormal. Another widely known case of this type of phenomenon is the story of Annabell the haunted doll. Reportedly, a demonic entity had attached itself to the doll and displayed strange paranormal behavior often negative in nature. Eventually, world renowned demonologists, Ed and Loraine Warren were called in to help the people effected by the doll's activity. Read the full story here. Another paranormal show, Paranormal State, investigated a case that believed an evil spirit invaded their house from a voodoo doll. For someone like me, who frequents estate sales, buying items that belonged to a recently deceased person, the idea of their spirit being attached to said items is frightening.

Annabell the possessed doll

I Promise

I vow, with my whole heart, that I will never ever do an "upcycle" project that will ruin the integrity of a beautiful vintage item. I will never paint wood that should not be painted. I will never destroy a book to make a trendy house decoration. Books should be read. I will never paint a globe, so as to not see the land divisions of that particular time. That is a part of history and history should not be forgotten. Also, I find that shit really interesting. I might chalkboard paint something, because chalkboards have always and will always be cool. However, I will not chalkboard paint a mid century dresser with dove tailed drawers. I won't melt records into bowls... Actually, I have done that, but to be fair, I did listen to the whole thing and it really wasn't anything to brag about on facebook or anything and I was pretty sure that no one else would be yearning to hear that particular record, so.... yea. I might fuck up some records every now and then. Just know that I will make sure to give the record a fair trial before I cut it up and make a purse out of it. I'll never bastardize a designer dress or make a shitty skirt out of a perfectly excellent vintage t-shirt.
I'm giving this vow, because with the power of the internet, idiots are out there blogging about how they re-created a vintage piece, copying another shitty blog who destroyed a perfectly built hutch and painted it into a trendy nightmare, thus ruining the finish and patina that the item was intended to have. It kills me sometimes that people will paint an item to be look "shabby chic" when in reality, if you think an item "needs" to be painted, then it probably already is "shabby chic". Sometimes, re-paints are necessary. And sometimes they stray far from it's original finish and look really cool, but what happens when every skillfully carved victorian dresser is painted silver long after the silver trend is over? Do you strip and re-paint it? Re-store it? Long to have a blonde wooded dresser the way they were made back in the day?
Here is the long and short of it folks. I think the 80s are a good marker for when the manufacturing business changed. True craftsmen of quality goods were pushed aside to make way for a more "economical" business model. Meaning that, manufacturers wanted to save money by using the cheapest materials possible and pay the least amount of money to hire people to make said products. And now we have pressed wood entertainment centers that fall apart after a couple years. Dresser drawers break the minute you put away your sweaters and and hastily sewn seams unravel after minimal wear. This has become the norm. This is what its come to.
When your grandpa says, "Back in my day, people used to care about what they built. They would take pride in it and make it beautiful. A piece of art." He's speaking the truth. Everybody's grandpa has said that, in so many words, at some point in time. Or our dads or uncles... They've all said it and they're all right. "Back in the day", shit was built to last. And last it did. Except for maybe cars. Cars have come a long way in their available safety features. They may not always look as cool as they used to, but I got to give it up for science and research on that one. And big up to engineers who designed my car so that I would have better chances at getting from point a to point b safely. But, in the general sense of the term, these general goods that we use on a daily basis, are being manufactured to fail. The older items, however, were built to last. Grandpa, Uncle, Daddy, Brother was right.
So, when I see some of these bloggers out there posting upcycle projects that destroy genuinely good vintage pieces, I can't help but cringe. Don't get me wrong. I love a good upcycle project, but not when it destroys the integrity of a well-built piece of history. Please, crafters, do your research on things before you chop them up and paint them! Make sure you're not ruining the value of something by changing it. Think about re-storing things to their original grandeur first, before painting it a trendy color that will be out of style next season. By all means, don't stop fixing things up, don't stop upcycling. Don't stop saving things from going into a landfill. Just please make sure you do your research first and consider preserving vintage rather than changing it. They don't make these things like they used to and if too many people jump on the upcycle band wagon without the proper knowledge of the things they are potentially destroying, pretty soon we won't have anything left.

There is something quite charming and magical about vintage items. They can take you away to a different place and time. They can show you a small slice of history, like, what the standard style of dress was in a certain decade or show you that at one time, telephones were not mobile and were attached to a wall in a home. Back then, when you were “on the phone,” you were almost literally “on” it or wrapped up in it by an immensely long, curly chord. These vintage items tell a story and you get double the story-telling with a vintage book.
When listing reasons why I love old books so much, I absolutely must begin with the smell of them. If you are a true bibliophile, I challenge you to go to a book store and NOT sniff the pages of the books you skim through. Even the new books smell great with that scent of fresh ink on new paper. However, the older books have more distinct and intoxicating smells. It has been proven that smell is a powerful memory trigger. I won’t go into all the scientific details of why, but if you want to learn more about that, click here.  I think that might be why so many people love the smell of books; because those smells remind them of something. Sometimes I smell books that remind me of early school days and other times I’m taken back to my Grandma’s living room. The scents from these pages can trigger so many memories and emotions, that your mind starts to imagine what kind of home the book lived in before it came into your hands and what kind of person sat up late reading it by a bedside lamp (or candle if the book is really old).  Speaking of candles, if someone made an “old book scented” candle, I would probably buy it by the case.

It's true. I do. Nearly every one that I pick up.