Patriots sale

[NEFAN]

I'm seeing a lot of the Pat's gamers sold on eBay now. I'm curious, why did they took the names off?

[Phil316]

According to Jim from the pro shop

"Many times jerseys are used for multiple years, and players come and go. When i player gets cut, they remove the nameplate and keep the jersey for the next player who may be assigned that number. The number of no-nameplate jerseys was pretty surprising - we have a couple hundred of them in the 200-2011 inventory."

[Mulligans]

As a bit of additional information....The Patriots were very "old school" with the way they handled their Jersey Inventory. For decades, it was almost impossible to get your hands on a Patriots Jersey. They had a strict inventory control that would not even allow the players access to their own uniforms. I had heard many players complain about this over the years. Even the Patriots Hall of Fame struggled to get Jerseys for display. For years, they used and reused Jerseys and that is why you saw so many without nameplates.....They were just being prepared for the next in line.

Don Brochere was the Patriots equipment manager for 40+ years and sadly he passed away this year with Cancer. He was a great guy and I had the pleasure to speak with him several times about the Jerseys. Right around the time that he got sick I saw an upswing in Pats Jerseys (Including Brady) on NFL Auctions, Ebay, Private sales etc. Many of the players were even peddling their own Jerseys. My guess is that the strict rules probably changed a bit with the changing of the guard. Prior to the 2009 release of International and White throwbacks, I can't recall too many Jerseys hitting the market.

I think that Patriots jerseys will continue to become more plentiful and pricing may change quite a bit over the next few years with an increase in supply........Just thought I would throw it out there.

[abstractheory]

Mulligans - It's info like this that draws me back to this forum. That is cool insight.

matt