That is still a heckuva find for the price you paid, especially if you bought it for you to wear. If you didn't, you most likely can still consign it at a nice shop or sell it at a definite profit
One other dating clue that you can use is the actual size when it comes to deciding if something is 80s or its very recent. 'Do the measurements seem to correspond roughly to the size on the label or is the garment much smaller than expected? Granted, skin tight items will measure smaller across but they will still fit the same sized gal. If it seems about right, it can't be any newer than 1988ish or perhaps 94ish.
The whole sizing scheme changed in the late 80s. The sizing is not as dramatically different as in, say the 1950s, but there is still a slight difference. It seemed that a British and a US 8 were about the same size at around that time, and then items labeled an 8 in the US found themselves labeled a size 6 and ultimately a 4. It was not as simple as merely changing the tags. There were some proportions that had changed as well before everything went downhill into vanity sizing. Ick. Vanity sizing. I am going to "disappear" into negative sizes in a few years unless everyone cuts it out. it's not that important for me for the tag on my jeans to read "0"!
