With the start of the new series of Look What Canadian Basketball Stuff I Found On Ebay, we decided to include the Raptors in on the set. Can Ball Ray begins this new regular entry with a blast from the past jersey that will really bring you back to the days when the team played in a baseball park ...
Item #1: A Toronto Raptors' Damon Stoudamire Champion Game Jersey
Check this gem of a find: .An authentic Champion Toronto Raptors Damon Stoudamire game jersey. How often do you find a jersey like this one? Very rarely. I don't see many Champion gamers let alone a Raptor one making this one a pretty good find.
As a jersey collector, I know my stuff pretty well and I know for sure that in Champion was still the official provider of all uniforms and team apparel for the NBA up until the late 90s. All the Champion jerseys had gold NBA logos for the league's 50th anniversary during the 1995-96 season making this jersey from at least the 1996-97 season.
If you notice, the jersey is still perforated and the colors are crisp. The tackle twill, or embroidered, numbers and letters are as they were with the game jersey that were sold to the public. The only thing that wasn't tackle twill was the player name (the Raps had all their names on name plates for easy transferring I guess) but everything else is right up there with what Stoudamire would have wearing when he ran the offense in the Skydome.
And you have to remember something about Damon: he was Toronto's first legit all star caliber player. He was Mighty Mouse and he seemed to embody the city with his size and his game playing amongst the trees. Toronto's first professional basketball star will always have a hallowed place among the Raps fans and his jersey gets no better than this.
As a true basketball fan and jersey aficionado, this is something I'd like to pick up. The price is a little on the high side but if you take into account that this is a 16 year old jersey, it's a Champion game edition and how much game jersey are going for now in the stores this is actually a steal.