I have finally completed one of the most difficult purchases I have ever attempted.  This wasn’t a home purchase.  That was relatively simple compared to what I just went through!  This was the acquisition of a specific hockey jersey.  Yup, that’s it.  One freakin’ hockey jersey!  I joined a hockey team mid-season and had to find a jersey to match the team.  They all bought theirs this past summer, so we aren’t talking about something that was from the 90’s.  The jersey is an RBK Platinum in Orange.  The first step was to just grab the jersey where they bought it from.  I went to Pro Hockey Life and was told they had absolutely no stock in any of their stores.  I was advised to see if their online shop had any.  It didn’t.  I then looked up the jersey on Reebok’s website and called all of their distributors in Southern Ontario.  Nobody had this thing!  Oh, one of the phone numbers was someones personal phone - Reebok has the number wrong on their website.  Oops!  I stopped in at Duke’s in Etobicoke Ontario and asked those guys what I could do.  They contacted their Reebok rep and were told they could ship one out within a week.  I thought my struggle was over.  No such luck.  A jersey arrived the next week…in burgundy.  They contacted the rep and were advised that the orange jersey was on back order and wouldn’t be available until March.  DAMN!!!  I then started scouring eBay and any other online shop.  No stock!!!  I finally stumbled upon Hockey Monkey and I called them up to confirm that they actually had the jersey I was looking for.  The saint of a woman who I dealt with informed me that they were showing no stock but she would go into the back and see if any were around.  She found one last jersey!  I have never been closer to proposing to a woman as I was on that day.  The funny thing came to the pricing.  They jersey was cheap at only $29.  The problem was I then had to pay $20 in shipping costs and an additional $10 when the jersey arrived in Canada as a result of the import tax.  Getting the thing here from California cost me more than the value of the item!  It didn’t matter.  At this point I was willing to pay $100 to get this jersey.  Only moments ago I had the numbers put on the back and I am FINALLY ready to wear my own jersey when I skate with the team. 

 

Oh, in case you are wondering why I chose #62…it’s in honor of Andrei Nazarov - the Russian bear who had a journeyman career in the NHL as an enforcer.  I always felt he had the talent to score a lot of goals.  His problem was that he spent too much time getting into fights and head butting people.

 

Tags: dukes, hockey, hockey monkey, jersey, platinum jersey, pro hockey life, rbk, reebok

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.