Many thanks to Flight Jacket Hub for sending in photos of this super rare item from his collection. As I have said in the past, I’ve managed to put together what I’d say is quite a nice collection of my own, but even if I become a multi-millionaire overnight, there are just so many tiny-batch or one-off rarities scattered all across the globe, no one person is ever going to have them all in once place. That’s why I greatly appreciate when people who do have rare examples send in images and let me upload them here to let the whole world see them for free. Much better than the dragon hoarders out there who collect and then shove it all in a dark cupboard to never ever be seen again.
The shirt itself is an entirely standard G1 combat shirt aside from the actual twill NYCO MARPAT fabric used for the sleeves/yoke/collar. Twill, as opposed to rip-stop, being the standard for USMC issued apparel. The wicking torso fabric, zips, velcro and PVC Crye label here are all identical to any common Multicam commercial production example of the same garment.
Gen 1 combat shirts come up about 2 sizes smaller than what you would usually expect, meaning this XL is more like a Medium in a Gen 2 combat shirt, which means it would actually be wearable for a decent number of people. As with a lot of the non-standard G2 garment labels out there (Flecktarn, UCP etc), the Item and Material lines seem to say ‘Custom’ rather than listing the actual specifics. Overall the shirt looks to be in pretty good condition considering it’s over 20 years old and the G1 combat shirts are not super durable when it comes to stitching, especially on the torso areas.
Again thanks to Flight Jacket Hub for the photos. If anyone out there has any similar examples, please do get in touch via any of my social media channels or e-mail.
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