When Rialto “Rio” Estolas started Throwbacks NW, a shop that sells vintage sports merchandise and clothing, the vintage boom hadn’t really begun yet. It was 2008, and not as many people were trawling thrift stores for hidden treasures to resell. Estolas would hit shops “from Olympia to Bellingham,” he says, and leave with shopping carts full of gold. Now, on a typical trip to a thrift store, he’s lucky to leave with one item worth putting up for sale at Throwbacks.
There’s a lot more competition these days. It seems everyone is a vintage reseller — if not in a brick-and-mortar store, then online. But Estolas established his niche early. If you want vintage jerseys, shirts, hats, and other merch associated with Seattle sports teams, you have to start your search at Throwbacks. Other stores dabble in that stuff, but Estolas specializes in it. If you come to the Capitol Hill store or the new Throwbacks NW Stadium Collective — on Second Avenue, just steps away from the entrance to Lumen Field — you can score classic ‘90s Sonics T-shirts, vintage Seahawks buttons and hats, and everything you need to relive the glory years when the Mariners were relevant, and the Sonics were in Seattle.
Estolas is so well established in the vintage sports game that he gets a lot of calls from people whose recently departed relatives have left behind collections. People will say, “Oh, my uncle just passed away, but we found this crazy collection that's been sitting in his attic for 40 years. You want to take a look at it?” Estolas says. “That's my favorite type of way to find stuff.”
When I stopped by the Stadium Collective this week, Estolas showed me some of the prized items hanging from the wall, including a couple of vintage World Cup 1994 varsity jackets designed by Jeff Hamilton — if you know who that is, you’ll know why those are on display. But there’s plenty of stuff here for the non-obsessive collector, the person who doesn’t occasionally spend $500 or more on a jacket. I walked away with a $7 Seahawks pin feeling pretty good about the upcoming season.
