Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Hunting for Gold at the Games


Those lucky spectators who streamed into the Olympic Park for Friday's opening ceremony were wise to keep their ticket stubs and any other ephemera related to the occasion, if only for their great-grandchildren's sake.

On collecting Olympics ephemera, care of the Vancouver Sun...

"But in 100 years' time it may well be that just a scarf from an Olympic 'meeter and greeter' in the park might be valuable, because there's only one left."

To prove his point, a cotton swimsuit and cap worn by British backstroke swimmer Eric Seward at the 1908 Games sold for $5,123 at a Bonhams auction on Wednesday, despite the swimmer being eliminated in the heats.

A score keeper's badge, complete with box, from the same Games sold for $2,562. Only 60,000 people will attend the opening ceremony, after more than a million had sought tickets. That already puts a rarity value on the item.

Even rarer will be the tickets for the most expensive elite seats that cost $3,172 or the cheapest offered at $32. Some eagleeyed philatelists have already spotted that the envelopes the tickets were sent in carried a special printed label declaring Postage Paid GB HQ2012 - sent from Games headquarters.

Keeping the used tickets and envelope together for posterity might one day make all the difference.

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