From there everything began to take shape. Wentz slowly began to amass a collection of vintage gear.
“Here we are now, and I have all this stuff and there are probably three products a day or probably 10 products a week that I’d sell,” said Wentz, who makes a lot of sales simply by posting pictures of his products directly to his Twitter account. “It’s fun. You get to meet a lot of new people. You go to these certain race tracks, you see people wear stuff, you go to Darlington, you’ll see drivers wearing your stuff. You’re just saving this stuff from being burned or thrown away and you’re giving it a second chance. So to me, that’s cool.”
He said one of the perks of working in NASCAR and traveling all over the country is the ability to go on the hunt for vintage gear when he’s not working at the race track.
“It’s the thrill of the hunt for me just to find this stuff,” Wentz said. “You can search Craigslist in Las Vegas or you can search Offer Up in Phoenix, Ariz. You find stuff in all these different regions of the United States and every region is different. Everybody has different stuff.
“So that’s what I do on the weekends. I’ll just sift through that stuff and I meet a lot of cool people and sometimes I go to places and I meet people and I’m like, ‘Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t really be meeting them here.’ It always turns out alright.
“I find a lot of that stuff around here in North Carolina and people give me stuff, people message me and just say I don’t want it anymore,” Wentz continued. “If you want to go through it, go through it and take what you want. And some people coming out and I’ll buy their totes of junk. Sometimes there are nine 10 or 11 totes and there might be two totes that I want, but they make me buy the whole thing. So there will be three totes of stuff I want and five totes of trinkets and junk that I could care less about.”
Wentz’s business isn’t limited to just NASCAR apparel. If he thinks he can sell it and turn a profit, then he’ll happily buy vintage short-track racing merchandise as well. He’s not picky when it comes to vintage racing gear.
“I go to the Chili Bowl and last year I had to pack a whole second suitcase, a $25 suitcase full of shirts just to go to the Chili Bowl and give them to the people that bought them there,” Wentz said. “The dirt world is a different breed of people. I found out they like their vintage clothing. I was lucky enough to find a lady in Ohio who had about 70 sprint car, midget and Outlaw items. I don’t have any of it left. That’s all gone. I think the majority of it I took to Tulsa last year.”
Wentz has as website, DayzGoneBy.net, that prospective buyers can visit to check out his collection of vintage gear. However, the best way to get some of Wentz’s newest finds is to follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Brent_Wentz.
In most cases Wentz will post his finds to Twitter, and within an hour the items are often sold. Wentz admits he never thought the sale of a few vintage T-shirts and hats would lead to him being the go-to guy for vintage racing apparel in the NASCAR garage.
“It’s amazing the response and the market that’s out there for this,” Wentz said. “I feel like it could turn into something bigger. But I have other priorities. I’ve got a wife and kid. I have work, I have things I want to do. I try to keep it this size. I don’t want it to grow any bigger than it is because it’s just a hobby. I don’t ever want it to be a job.
“To me it’s just bringing people back to what the sport was 40, 30, 20 years ago. And that’s a good way to do it I think,” Wentz added. “You can do it by wearing a T-shirt or a hat.”