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New vs Used/hand me down & Last Years Model Youth Hockey Equipment
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Youth Hockey Info:
You can buy hockey equipment cheap! With a little work, you can get what you need for the price you want, here's how.
It's not an entirely new concept. Sites like SidelineSwap, Prostockhockey, Facebook Marketplace (hockey sales groups), Craigslist etc. have been around for several years. They offer a flea-market/auction type sales environment online to sell and purchase new or used hockey gear with bidding and/or buy now options.
Check it out....
SidelineSwap & ProStock Hockey - While much of the equipment is second hand, sold by the original owner for a second go around. A good amount of the gear on the site is also brand new overstock which hockey stores try selling on the secondary marketplace. You can get great deals from both options. For instance, I was successful buying full goalie gear, both new and used on Sidelineswap, all exclusively with bids. Altogether I was able to buy everything I needed for what would have been at or around $3000 brand new, for just over $600 total! I received the equipment clean and in great condition. Like anything though, I don't assume what I receive second hand is cleaned to my standards. Give it a good run through the wash again for good measure. I was very happy with everything purchased.
Facebook and Craigslist - Both can be as useful or better options, depending on how they're leveraged. Personally, I find both to be a bit chaotic. There are so many users constantly adding posts it's almost as if anything newly added gets buried within minutes of clicking send. I find Craigslist search feature is slightly better than the FB Marketplace but not by much. You really have to look for the good deals and often you're left to sift through pages of garbage you have no interest in.
The Big Box Websites - Shopping the clearance rack, or webpage for lack of a better term for hot deals is always a great idea, as long as they have your size. We've purchased our kids skates on clearance for the past 5 years, in turn this has saved us thousands. Skates are like new cars. Every manufacturer comes out with a new model each calendar year. And each year that new model has a slight variation to the previous. A new color scheme or boot pattern, a different material in the tongue, new stitching patterns etc. All estethic changes, the actual fit remains the same, as that is what differentiates the manufacturers from one another. You get the same quality hockey skate only a year earlier model/design for normally over half off. For instance we have purchased $300 skates for just around $100 on HockeyMonkey and $500 skates for $200 several times. Again it comes down to size and preference. We got our kids sized at PureHockey in the model skate they were interested in after we went online and found the previous year on clearance. Once sized accurately, we ordered the new last model year skates. Nobody knows the difference otherwise and we always get a huge deal.
Thrifty shopping pays off if you have the time and inclination to look for deals!
Guest:
Also, if I can add on if you are purchasing new equipment, purchase from a Canadian site rather than Pure Hockey or Hockey Monkey due to the current exchange rate. My son is a goalie so I will use goalie equipment as an example. Currently Warrior Ritual GT2 Junior Pads cost $349.99 on both Pure Hockey and GoalieMonkey. I usually shop hockey hockeygeeks goalie equipment retail store – hockeygeeks.com which is a Canadian Goalie store. They currently sell the same pads for $327 once you convert CAD to USD. And the shipping is usually cheaper surprisingly than either US store as well. It isn't a lot in savings but once you factor in reduced shipping you can usually save almost $50 USD depending on what you are purchasing.
Guest:
Our kids all get clearance equipment and its well below what is current pricing but it's still overpriced either way.
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