Good morning.

Aside from a rather hastily crafted post in the "July 2013 pick-ups" thread, this is my first post on the game used universe forums. I am so glad to have access to this wonderful community and the experts that post within.

About a year ago, after becoming increasingly disenchanted with collecting baseball cards, I decided to start collecting game used jerseys. Excitedly, I logged into ebay and began looking for something to buy. Almost immediately I saw a game used jersey for one of my boyhood heroes, Jumpsteady himself, Garry Templeton. I asked the seller a couple of questions and I eventually bought it. When it arrived, I was pretty happy. The seller disclosed the following imformation BEFORE I bought it: The jersey is tagged 1980 in the tail, but he believed it was worn by Templeton in 1981. What you might not be able to tell from the pictures is that it has undergone a name / number change. The outline for #5 and letters that spell "P-H-I-L-L-I-P-S" are visible on the back. The seller said that it was common for the Cardinals to recycle jerseys and re-issue them to other players. Since Mike Phillips was traded from the Cardinals before the 1981 season, and also because he and Templeton were the same size, I shrugged it off and bought it anyway.

Fast forward to today. After cooling my heels for the past year and reading up on the hobby (educating myself), I have decided that I needed a focus for my collection. I chose to focus my collection on acquiring game worn college baseball jerseys from players who were named all-american. As is such, Templeton doesn't fit my focus anymore. Since I am limited as far as how much money I can spend on my hobby, I decided to sell the Templeton jersey to help fund my new collecting focus. Don't worry, this is NOT a selling thread. Before I sell this jersey, I want to find out if it is either a real Templeton gamer, a jersey altered by someone other than the cardinals organization to make the jersey look like a Templeton gamer, or something else entirely. So, I am asking the board. Please help. I took some photos with my iphone, but they are rather large. I posted them on my imagevent page which can be found here: http://imageevent.com/thebeautifulga...jerseyquestion

Any help or advice would be great. I don't want to pass on a problem jersey to another collector. And I am also curious as to its authenticity.

Alan