Recent Acquisition: EA Sports Snapback Cap

I have to be delicate in this post.

It's not that I'm upset or anything, but the story of a recent acquisition involves my employment and a representative of a well known video game developer.

Every year my company sends its management team (of which I am a member) to a convention where we get to see presentations from all of the major video game developers. In short, it's pretty awesome. Sort of like our own little E3. It's usually held in September, but the last couple of years it's been in late August during the week of Madden launch. I always preorder the latest Madden game and last year was no different. Except that this year my company, in conjunction with EA Sports ran a promotion where if you picked up your reserved copy of Madden within the first 24 hours you got a code to get a free New Era EA Sports snapback cap, just pay shipping. Well, of course I'm interested, except I'm in Texas. So I figure I'll go talk to a rep from EA Sports to see what recourse, if any, I have. After their presentation I headed down to speak to the facilitator, explained my dilemma, even showed him a picture of my office just to prove I was serious about getting this cap. He was impressed and suggested I speak to an associate of his who was in another part of the room. So I gave the same speech and demonstration to this guy, who was also impressed, and he gives me his email address and says to email him right then so he'd have mine. He said after the conference he'd email me a couple of codes so I could take advantage of the offer. Sweet, I thought. I'm going to get this cap!

So a couple of weeks pass and I hear nothing. So I send this guy a very polite email, reiterating my interest. No response. A few weeks later, another polite email and still no response. I have to be honest here, stuff like that pisses me off. If this didn't involve my company I'd totally be using this guy's name, but I won't. As a consumer, I think blowing someone off like that is rude. I would never treat a customer with such disrespect.

But I digress. Months pass and thoughts about this cap fade, until I start seeing various social media postings about how the cap, after months of waiting had finally arrived. My good friend and fellow cap collector Matt Aballi was one who blogged about it, and in essence started my quest to find this cap. It didn't take long to find one on eBay, but I had to pay $20 for it instead of the $4.99 shipping cost or whatever it was. And though I'm no lover of adjustable.....er.... snapback caps, I'm actually rather impressed with it.

Not a fan of snapbacks, but this is a nice exclusive.

Nice embroidery.

Under the visor. Very cool.

Again, I prefer fitteds, but this one is pretty impressive. Love the chalkboard on the underside of the visor. A lot of recent exclusives have started utilizing this part of the cap, and of the ones I've seen this one is the coolest. I don't know when I'll wear it. Snapbacks tend to have high crowns and look appropriate for commandeering a locomotive in my opinion. Maybe while doing yardwork or something. But regardless it has earned a spot on the wall.