UT Baseball Cap and Products Made in America

I finally cut the tags from this brand new baseball cap that my brother bought for me a few months ago at The University of Tennessee's bookstore. I was in dire need of a new UT baseball cap, and he was kind enough to pick it up for me.

Living in Pennsylvania where everyone lives and breathes Penn State, it's hard to get away with wearing a bright orange baseball cap sporting the Volunteer's "T" logo. That's OK. I wear my UT stuff with pride even if we had a lousy season. Win or lose, they're still my team. (I still think Philip Fulmer got the bum's rush, but I won't go there.)

Anyway, while making an early dinner, I looked up and noticed a bar code on the inside of the visor. I immediately thought of an interesting post I read yesterday about bar codes and how you can tell where a product was manufactured.

I stumbled upon the post via The Artful Life blog. Tina has a wonderful list of blogs that she follows, and it's there that I found the Curds and Whey blog.

If you visit Curds and Whey, you'll see Karen's post about bar codes. It's very interesting. If you're like me, and you want to buy more American-made products, I encourage you to visit her blog.

This baseball cap has a bar code starting with 053. According to the blog post, this indicates that the cap was made in The United States; however, the inside label states that it was made in China. I wonder if there's a foolproof way to make this determination. My bet is that the label that's stitched into the cap trumps the peel-and-stick bar code.

It's funny how something as simple as a baseball cap can get you thinking about where products are made. Go VOLS! Better luck next year.