WWE is selling a $100 Vince McMahon shirt.
That’s, uh, bad. But it’s also pretty funny because people will buy it, dazzled by the premium price, which will somehow create the illusion of scarcity that drives collectables buyers despite the fact that this is a direct to garment t-shirt and not a Funko Pop or a wrestling doll or whatever wrestling fans collect these days.
I am a t-shirt collector, and I can tell you this: WWE’s attempt at grifting the crowd that shows up in Las Vegas for Money in the Bank is worth less than what they’re selling it for. There’s the material level, of course, where WWE is making a profit of north of the cost of printing the shirt (at their volume not much) and the $1,000,000 bill that comes with it, but there’s something else dragging the market down:
They sold the exact same shirt and bill at SummerSlam last year.
The seller’s description of the shirt reads “WWE Vince McMahon summerslam limited edtion Tshirt & 1Billion Dollars Bill Large. Note this bill is not legal tender. Only 500 was produced for Summerslam 2021 in las Vegas.” This may have been true then, but it’s not now. Now you can just pop over to WWEShop and grab the same 1/500 shirt this dude bought for the same price he did, without the promised rarity of the item. Looking closely at the provided pictures, on the listing, neither the shirt nor the bill have anything on them verifying their provenance, like an industry standard #/500 stamp on the shirt or the bill. The seller is asking $250, but his shirt is worth fuck all.
Even better …
The billion dollar bill asset got reused for the “Billion Dollar Asshole” shirt created in commemoration of Vince McMahon’s “performance” against Pat McAfee and Steve Austin at WrestleMania.
But shirt-sleuthing aside, here’s how the $100 Vince McMahon shirt holds up:
Pros
- Thoroughly answers the question “what would happen if the Vince McMahon of now and the Vince McMahon of 20 years ago wound up in a The Fly like situation.”
- Some of the ire directed towards the replica belt community will be redirected towards the “fake $1,000,000 bill with Vince McMahon’s face on it” community, which is cool because replica belt collectors are ultimately harmless whereas Vince McMahon fetishists are S-tier sickos.
- I like the idea of Vince McMahon putting most of his fortune behind the minting of a $1,000,000 bill, something that doesn’t spend well and could get lost in the washing machine. It’s like how when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson trusted him with the possession of the $100,000,000 egg from Red Letter, which totally wasn’t one of the reasons Netflix lost subscribers for the first time, he kept it in an unlocked room in the stadium.
- Vince’s T. Rex skull is on the bill. I fucking love the T. Rex skull. I wonder if Vince McMahon has seen Jurassic Park.
- Nice $100 bookmark, bro.
Cons
- I kind of don’t see any? I mean, the shirt sucks and the tagline makes sense, but to be a fan of WWE — and I mean a true fan — one has to be a masochist. Whether you watch Raw, listen to Corey Graves’ podcast, attend NXT Coconut Loop shows, watch NXT, weather Peacock’s absurdly bad user interface to watch Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions, or attempted to follow The Undertaker’s Three Mental Moves, this deathless, ancient, sprawling, and largely abysmal company offers an endless array of pain. To quote Pinhead, pain has a face. That face is Vince McMahon’s. I may not like it, but I didn’t come here to kinkshame.
Rating: 10.0
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- WWE’s History of Illegal Immigration Storylines and Stereotyping Mexican Talent
- The Fever Dream That Was the First Six Weeks of WWF Shotgun Saturday Night
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