The Stussy Homeboy jacket from 1988- what was the retail price back then?
Executive summary
Multiple contemporary resale and marketplace listings identify the Stussy “1988 Vintage Homeboy” wool-and-leather varsity jacket with an original retail figure of $220, a figure echoed by consignment platforms that estimate historic retail values at the same level, but that evidence rests on modern product pages rather than archival 1988 receipts or Stüssy catalogs, leaving room for uncertainty about whether $220 was the jacket’s nationwide MSRP in 1988 or a reconstructed/reseller figure [1] [2] [3].
1. What the available sources report about the 1988 “Homeboy” jacket price
Several online sellers and aggregators list a “Stussy 1988 Vintage Homeboy Black Wool & Leather Varsity Jacket” and explicitly state an “original price” or “est. retail” of $220; these claims appear on at least two vendor pages specializing in Stussy reproductions or vintage items and on a luxury consignment site’s product notes [1] [2] [3].
2. Why those numbers should be treated as informed signals rather than definitive proof
Those $220 figures come from modern product descriptions on resale and third‑party sites that often reconstruct or display an “original price” for shoppers; they do not cite primary 1988 Stüssy price lists, catalogs, advertisements, or contemporaneous retail receipts in the snippets provided, so the $220 assertion is plausible but not primary-source-verified by the materials at hand [1] [2] [3].
3. Marketplace behavior and potential motives behind a consistent $220 figure
Consistent repetition of $220 across different resale and consignment platforms can indicate either genuine reference to an authentic historical MSRP that sellers have reproduced or a market convention adopted by vendors to signal value to buyers; reseller listings and curated consignment sites have commercial incentives to standardize “original” prices to justify present asking prices and discounts [1] [2] [3].
4. Secondary evidence about Stüssy pricing and product positioning in the 1980s
The available sources establish Stüssy as an influential streetwear brand founded in the early 1980s and known for jackets among other apparel, which supports the idea that Stüssy produced varsity-style jackets in that era, but none of the snippets supplied provide a contemporaneous Stüssy 1988 catalog or MSRP documentation to corroborate a precise price point beyond resale claims [1] [2] [4].
5. How to read the $220 claim in context of vintage clothing markets
In vintage and consignment commerce, “original price” labels are commonly used to frame discounts and resale value; platforms such as The RealReal provide “est. retail” figures that are helpful for buyers but are estimations derived from brand research or market knowledge rather than archival proof, meaning $220 is a reasonable working figure but should be considered an estimate unless corroborated by direct 1988 documentation [3].
6. What’s missing and how to corroborate further
To move from plausible consensus to documented fact would require primary sources—contemporary Stüssy catalogs, magazine ads, retail tags, or original sales receipts from 1988—or authoritative brand archives or historian confirmation; those materials are not present in the supplied reporting, so a definitive archival confirmation of a 1988 MSRP cannot be claimed on the basis of these pages alone [1] [2] [3].
7. Bottom line for readers and collectors
The best available reporting in current resale and consignment listings points to an original/estimated retail price of about $220 for the Stussy “1988 Vintage Homeboy” jacket, a figure repeated across multiple commercial listings and an industry consignment site, but it remains an informed estimate rather than an archival confirmation given the lack of primary 1988 documentation in the provided sources [1] [2] [3].