I know you have done this before. I have too*. But don't fret, I have found away around the official merchandise problem with a little trick I discovered out in the streets of Spain...
I am fortunate enough to have a father that loves building up his sky miles**. For one lovely winter holiday, the family got to go to Madrid, Spain and then backpack south into Morocco to see some family in Rabat and Tangier. I was hoping we would take a detour off into Barcelona so that I could buy some FC Barcelona merchandise for my colombian friend back home who was in love with the team. But no, we didn't make it. In fact, it was never in the itinerary. Only Real Madrid was, more like real cold Madrid. So as we went shopping through the stores in the city, I found a place that sold official team merchandise. At first, all I could find was the over-priced Real Madrid items and was discouraged. I had a certain Euro limit that I couldn't go over and this pricing was horrible. Then I find the clearance section and all of FC Barcelona merchandise! Over 50% off on all the items, I guess it paid off trying to buy merchandise in the opposing team's city where no one wants to buy and support sworn enemies***. I was able to buy a cap for her and a deck of cards for me. All with official sports seals at a fraction of the cost!
The gist of that story is that so long as you do not buy at the heart of the fandom, you will save money on whatever official stuff you want to buy. First, I would advise going to a school rival's town, like GA Tech is to UGA and U of A is to ASU, and visit official merchandise retailers to find what you are looking for. They may even have an online site so you don't have to go in person****. The only issue is that they may not advertise their clearance items online. So long as you don't buy from the bookstore, you are going to save. The bookstore, in this case, has the largest brand power in that because it is on campus, it means that they only sell officially licensed merchandise, which is not true. I've seen schools sell both official and china-made merchandise, not that the official merchandise isn't china-made either. Somehow, people get confused in that they think the college bookstore is the only place to buy merchandise when that should be the last place to buy. Take a walk right off campus and you will probably find a handful of places selling the same stuff, at nearly 20% - 30% off from bookstore list price.
Save yourself some money for off campus stores so you can buy more merchandise. Don't buy from the bookstore. Never again will I buy socks on campus, and neither should you.
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*I went for the socks on one cold winter morning. I regret the purchase to this day.
**He hates building up miles actually because he is always on required working business trips in places that he never gets to enjoy.
***Spain and Barcelona actually get along real well but there was a war fought between El Salvador and Honduras over soccer matches in 1969. Talk about fandom.
****clc.com has a directory of all retailer by which school's merchandise you would like to buy.
