There came a time, a few years ago, where I felt that I had saved enough money to start thinking about “upping the ante” when it came to my jersey collection. I had a lot of cool Avs jerseys, but something was missing. It was time to go after some game worn jerseys.
I ended up on Captain’s Jerseys site. I’d hyperlink it for you, but he doesn’t do near as much as he used to when it comes to jerseys on his site. Anyways, I ran across an Andrew Brunette game used alternate jersey from the 2005-2006 season. I’m a real sucker for any jersey with a patch on it. (Have I mentioned that 100 times already yet?) I sent him what I thought was a fair offer on the jersey, he countered with an offer that wasn’t so fair, and I decided to turn it down. Guess what showed up on eBay a few weeks later? After I got over feeling cheated about him not giving me a heads up about the jersey being listed I followed the auction and won it. If I remember right, the auction ended at about $75 cheaper than my original offer to him. Funny how things work out sometimes. I finally had my first game worn jersey for my collection.
I don’t meet many Avalanche fans, or jersey fans, that don’t like the style of this jersey for a lot of reasons. I’ve missed them since the Avalanche stopped wearing them. They just have that classic look that everyone has a hard time disliking.
The first thing I noticed on the jersey was the game wear. Seeing the “battle scars” that litter the jersey is always part of the excitement when a gamer arrives. This jersey had a fair amount of wear. Here are some examples.
And I don’t really want to even guess what this is above the 15 on the right sleeve. Glue? A burn from the boards? Snot? Who knows?
I noticed a few more things about this jersey right away too. One thing is the new NHL shield sewn directly over the old NHL shield on the back tail. This is consistent with many of the jerseys from this era. When Reebok took over the branding from CCM/Koho, this is what they did to recycle the jerseys in a sense. Here’s the new shield:
And here’s the old NHL shield with the tail of the jersey flipped up.
The tag you see above is the Meigray tag. Every team that has signed a deal with Meigray has their game worn and game issued jerseys tagged this way. Each jersey has its own number and the “C” in front of the “02824” indicates that this jersey came from the third year of the game worn jersey program. Here’s the weird part though, this jersey has two Meigray tags. The one above is actually on the bottom of the front right of the jersey, where no Meigray tags ever are. Here’s the real Meigray tag, where it’s supposed to be, on the back left side of the bottom of the jersey.
The small patch to the left of the Meigray tag helped Meigray “recycle” the jerseys they had tagged for the 2004-2005 NHL season, which was a total wash as a result of the players being locked out by the owners of the league. I contacted Meigray about the double tag and they said it was a mistake on their part. It was also noted in their records that this jersey was double-tagged. I hadn’t seen a jersey with two Meigray tags on it before this one and I haven’t seen one since. Strange quirks are fun, especially when the jersey is yours.
Since this jersey I have added many more game issued and game worn jerseys which you’ll hear all about in the future, I just wanted to share with you how the fever began.