COLUMBUS, Ind. — The style isn’t exactly “groovy” or “far-out.”
But for brothers Mike and Tom Dell, the discovery of a never-worn men’s dress shirt from their store dating back to near the Summer of Love (1967) is a pretty cool find.
On Jan 18, Brad Woodcock was looking over two carloads of donations to Sans Souci obtained from the home of a donor’s elderly relatives.
As the thrift store’s operations supervisor looked over the contributions, a gift box from Dell Bros. Inc., 416 Washington St., caught his eye. While the style isn’t much different than today’s fashions, Woodcock says it was the $4 price tag pinned to the Dell shirt that took him by surprise.
“I thought: ‘Man, how long has it been that a shirt at Dell Bros. sold for only four dollars?’” Woodcock said. “I took a couple of pictures of the shirt and the price tag and texted them to Tom Dell.”
After Dell saw the cost code on the price tag (60867 ARL½ SFG), he said it made him feel a long-lost connection with his grandmother, Winifred Dell (1893-1978). The store’s former bookkeeper was the one who created the code that immediately informed her grandson it was a spring-fashion shirt from 1967.
Based on his own experiences, Dell says someone likely purchased the shirt made by the now-defunct Shapely Manufacturing Co. as a gift for an occasion weeks or months in the future. The shirt was likely hidden in a closet or attic — and simply forgotten, he said.
That scenario has played out a number of times, he said. But a shirt in pristine condition from his store that was untouched for 54 years? Dell said he had never seen anything like that before.
That prompted Dell to ask Woodcock to put the shirt and box aside until he could make it over to the thrift shop and buy it.
When Woodcock took the shirt to San Souci Executive Director Sheryl Adams to explain the situation, a decision was made to gift the item to the third-generation Dell shopowner because it was part of his family’s legacy, Woodcock said. The shirt will be professionally covered before it is placed on permanent display at the store, Tom Dell said.
When the founding Dell brothers — Charles, Nicholas and William — first purchased an existing men’s store called J.L. Gysie Clothes, Hats and Haberdashery in 1916, $4 for a dress-shirt was expensive. During their grand opening sale, you could buy a dress shirt at Dell Bros. for as low as 69 cents, according to archived 1916 advertisements. However, a Richmond, Indiana department store was selling them the same yer for 50 cents.
While a number of items discovered in pristine condition increase in value, you’ll never see men’s dress shirts on “Antique Roadshow.”
“I imagine any additional value is apparent only to us,” Dell said.
Regular customers understand Dell Bros. is well known for their collection of items from their past, Woodcock said. And when the community honored the men’s store in 2016 for keeping their business in the same family for 100 years, a number of friends and customers came forward with collectables tied to the store’s history.
For example, the brothers were provided with three combination calendars and thermometers with “Dell Bros.” printed on them. Two date back to 1941, while the oldest is from 1933.
In order to keep their name in the public’s mind during the Great Depression, the founding Dell brothers would make promotional items from scratch themselves including the calendar/thermometers, Tom Dell said An old printing press utilized for several purposes, including creating advertising products, can still be found on the store’s second floor, Tom Dell said.
One item prominently displayed is a 1920s-era straw hat. Although Tom Dell says it didn’t come from his store, the friend who provided it had the Dell Bros. log placed prominently inside the hat.
One of their prized possessions is a large box of unused J.L. Gysie sales receipts What strikes Tom Dell as odd is that they all have 191_ printed on them, indicating the former owners never expected their store would be around after 1919, he said.
