Why Did a Red Cross Snoopy Shirt Resell for $200?

News

By RC Staff

13 June 2023

Have you donated blood recently? To incentivize people to offer up their arms, the Red Cross produced a run of t-shirts featuring the Peanuts character Snoopy. The design is certainly appealing, but it seems like nobody anticipated just how cool these shirts would end up being. After going viral on TikTok and Twitter, the Snoopy Red Cross shirts became a desirable piece of fashion. Did that mean young people started donating blood in droves? Sort of, but a lot of them just bought the shirts off eBay for a massive markup.

The Red Cross Snoopy T-Shirt

A vital part of the blood donation process is bragging to other people about your selflessness. Either through an “I just gave blood” pin, or leaving the bandage on longer then necessary, or from a cool piece of merchandise. The Red Cross knows this, and they periodically produce clothing items to hand out with donations.

In April, a new t-shirt campaign began. This one featured Snoopy from Peanuts dressed in a leather jacket and shades (avid Peanuts readers would know this as his Joe Cool persona). Snoopy is leaning against the Red Cross logo and saying “Be Cool. Give Blood.” Okay Snoopy!

The eclectic nature of the shirt and its faux-vintage styling made it very popular compared to the Red Cross’ previous offerings. In fact, the Red Cross Snoopy t-shirt would go viral on TikTok, and a legion of anemic teenagers began fawning over the design.

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i ❤️ snoopy #snoopy

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Numerous TikToks were posted under the “Snoopy Shirt” topic, which has around 600 million views as of this writing in June. The Red Cross did report an uptick in donations during this period, so its clear the promotion was a success.

After announcing the shirt, people would only have until April 23rd to claim one. While the obvious intention was to get more people through the door at donation centers, it had a side effect: there was now a booming aftermarket for the Red Cross Snoopy t-shirts.

Red Cross Snoopy T-Shirts for sale

There were plenty of young folks too lazy, sick, or busy to donate blood. Does that mean they should miss out on one of these shirts? Well, yes, but that would mean we live in a reasonable world.

Instead, if you didn’t feel like actually going out to give blood, you could simply buy one of these shirts and subtly imply that you did give blood. Or at least that you support the idea of giving blood. In any case, teenagers who thrive off fast fashion loved these shirts, so much so that they were willing to pay real life money for something they could get for free.

And how much did these Red Cross Snoopy t-shirts sell for? In some cases, $200 or more. In the early days of the promotion there were a handful of sales at or above this number.

There’s probably more to be found on Depop or Mercari or Poshmark or wherever teenagers do their thrifting, but the point still stands: these Snoopy t-shirts resold. Or rather, they just regular sold, because you never had to buy them in the first place. They were free!

Over time the average sale price worked its way down as interest in the Red Cross Snoopy t-shirts was replaced with the next TikTok trend. There are still plenty of sales between $50 and $150, but the bubble has popped. There’s probably a lesson here on cashing out before the Zoomer attention span shifts, but that’s up to you to find.

Want more examples of viral TikTok trends translating into money for resellers? Check out our articles on the Target drag queen birds and the fishbowl cup. Both of these are extremely cheap seasonal products sold from Target that inexplicably blew up on TikTok, then resold for 10 times their retail price. Add them to your shopping list next time you head to Target.

Make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter for the next updates in the world of reselling. Whether its completely free stuff like these shirts, or valuable items you can flip for thousands over retail, we’ll cover it.