N ormal people can’t buy shares of OpenAI or Anthropic ahead of the companies’ looming IPOs. So some are buying into a different kind of secondary transaction: used t-shirts and hoodies that were doled out to employees or conference-goers as a perk, that are now reselling for hundreds of dollars.

On eBay, there’s a bubble in AI company swag. Recently, boxes of OpenAI Codex swag consisting of a hat, hoodie and a few small tchotchkes, were commanding as much as $475. A used OpenAI sweatshirt, $246.99. An Anthropic-branded pen sold for $39.99 ; An authentic employee t-shirt from the $956 billion AI company, fetched $120 .

“I do think these are the vintage concert rock shirts of tomorrow,” says Mitchell Brody, who operates a t-shirt shop on eBay with his college-aged daughter, Sunny. They’re currently selling an employee-issued OpenAI t-shirt for $249.99 . “It’s geek chic. There’s going to be a day when people brag about the OpenAI double stitch shirt they got in the roaring twenties.”

Forbes spoke with sellers who have recently sold AI company swag on eBay, who confirmed that it, particularly OpenAI and Anthropic items, is going for many multiples above other types of company swag. On Brody’s shop, for instance, an employee tank top from tech stalwart Google is listed for $24.95. Even SpaceX lacks the new AI swag hotness premium— a legit company polo is priced at $11.92.

It’s another bubble inside the bubble.

“There’s going to be a day when people brag about the OpenAI double stitch shirt they got in the roaring twenties.” EBay seller Mitchell Brody

“The only time I've seen it like that is when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, and their swag was selling at big prices,” said one Bay Area-based seller, who declined to be identified because his employer is not aware of his side hustle. But when the bank survived, its swag bubble deflated. Recently an appropriately fatuous SVB wine glass and cheese board set sold for less than $23 .

A shirt or pen is a poor substitute for equity or an AI big on your resume. But perhaps there’s something in the illusion of belonging in the machine washable theater of Silicon Valley clout.

“You’ll look cool if you wear the swag, particularly if you don’t live in San Francisco where it’s commonplace to know people who work at these companies,” the seller says. Many buyers are from outside major tech hubs.

“Ohio is a place I hear from a lot,” he says. “Same with upstate New York.”

The real value, sellers say, isn't just the logo: it is tied to hyper-limited, small-batch runs pegged to product launches and company milestones. The garments are Silicon Valley street cred, proof that you attended a special event — or bought a shirt from someone who did.

Because anyone can print a corporate logo onto a generic blank t-shirt, buyers meticulously inspect garments for manufacturing tags and original conference packaging to verify their authenticity, sellers told Forbes. Many are found in thrift shops. Some are simply gifted to them by friends in the industry.

“The shirts that are worth the most are employee-issued. It’s insider-ish,” Brody said, who said that SpaceX shirts specific to a single flight number command massive premiums. “If you can get something others can’t buy on a public website, those are the real bragging rights.”

OpenAI is opportunistically leaning into the hype to create a revenue-generating business line. OpenAI Supply Co , which was formerly for internal employees, quietly launched to the public on Wednesday. The site peddles custom garments, such as a $40 hat and $15 socks, and on an archive page, lists old swag with “decommissioned” dates, similar to how Nike would orchestrate a limited release SNKR scarcity event.

The store is a monument to its own vainglory, peddling “commemorative” swagriculture.

“Supply Co. began as a small line of merch for employees and almost immediately blew up. OpenAI-ers developed concerningly strong, excited opinions about collectible cards, blue folding chairs, and graphic hoodies as emerging currency,” the store’s About page explains, noting that OpenAI merch isn’t just corporate logo loot, but rather a “material embodiment of company culture” and “physical expressions of research energy.”

This isn’t the first speculative swag frenzy Silicon Valley has experienced. Collectors have always paid top dollar for mementos of spectacular startup crashes, where it’s from early dot-com busts Pets.com and Webvan or the more recent wreckage of Theranos and WeWork . And Apple has always been on the forefront of tech hypebeast culture: in the early 2000s, enthusiasts would wait in line at Apple store openings for limited edition free tshirts, which they would then flip on eBay for $200 or even $500 .

But it’s only in the past decade that relics from past tech success stories have turned into a multi-million-dollar asset class — in particular, vintage Apple and Steve Jobs mementos. RR Auction, a Boston-based auction house that has overseen some of the largest tech memorabilia sales in history, has sold an original Apple-1 computer board handmade in Jobs’ garage for $2.75 million, a 1976 Wells Fargo check signed by Jobs and Steve Wozniak for $2.4 million, and a rare early Apple promotional poster for $650,000. Google and Microsoft memorabilia also sell, though they command prices in the low thousands, not millions.

Once the purview of Hollywood and rock-n-roll fans, the memorabilia market has spent the last decade making room for tech artifacts the same way it made plastic Star Wars action figures high-value assets.

Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction, describes it as a sort of high-end participation trophy. “That moment when a creator comes up with a paradigm-shifting product, that’s the touchstone for them emotionally,” he says. “It means something.”

But the market is brutally binary. Apple relics are king, and Google and Microsoft might command respectable prices, but everything else is garage dregs.

“Failed companies’ t-shirts and swag have no value if nobody’s heard of that product anymore,” Livingston says. “Apple has a cult, and the rest are lost to history.”

Livingston thinks it will take another 25 years for AI swag to mature into a formal auction category, but he’s already seeing signs of froth. Early graphics cards and computing boards hand-signed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang are currently selling for between $8,000 and $10,000. Last year, AI influencer Linus Ekenstam received a Google Gemini TPU, one of the computer chips that the search giant makes for training AI models, entombed in an acrylic box. He views it as a family heirloom and plans to pass it down through generations of his family.

Those looking to make a quick buck today should target Anthropic swag, as it has been historically hard to find. Alejandro Navia, who works at an AI company, said that he switched his flight to New York City just so he could stand in line to receive a free Anthropic baseball hat embroidered with the words “thinking.” They now run between $50 and $100 on eBay.

When he learned he could make some cash from selling it, he considered it. But he quickly decided against it.

“I’d rather have it for the lore; the bragging rights,” he said. “The Valley is documented via swag. ‘Oh you were there for that one? Yeah. So cool!’”