Wanted: ticket stubs from Sachin match

Like thousands of other Sachin fans, Rohit Chaudhary had been desperately scouting for tickets to Tendulkar’s 200th Test match at the Wankhede in Mumbai. Of course, Chaudhary wanted to watch his hero play one last time, but he also wanted those tickets — to Sachin’s very last game for India — for his "collection".
Chaudhary, who runs a graphics design firm in Delhi, and his wife call themselves "avid travellers" and collect everything from their travels — museum stubs, theatre tickets and so on."That’s where the Sachin tickets would have gone," says Chaudhary, who says he’s still hoping to get his hands on one, and that he might be willing to pay as much Rs 1,000 for a ticket after the match is over.
Rajendram Akula, 35, a movie marketer in Mumbai, was luckier. He managed to get hold of a ticket online, and took the day off from work to watch Sachin. Akula says he has had fervent requests from friends and family on social media to part with his ticket. "People have begged me to give them my ticket after the match so that they can frame it. They’ve even offered to buy it off me," says Akula, who thinks he might be able to get Rs 2,000 to 3,000 for it on a site like eBay.
Deepa Thomas, who is head of communications and charity for eBay, will not give an exact figure as to how much she thinks these tickets can be sold for but does say it is possible they could go for "anything up to a few lakhs, the ones that are autographed by Tendulkar himself". In 2009, she says, when Sachin had completed 20 years in cricket, eBay auctioned 20 bats autographed by him. The proceeds were to go to charity and the bats sold for between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 50,000.
This time around, eBay is selling miniature bats, coffee mugs and mobile phone cases with a picture and Tendulkar’s signature on them on a micro site dedicated to the cricketer. And five lucky buyers of their 200 gm Sachin Tendulkar silver coins will get to meet the man himself.
In recent years, a market for cricket memorabilia appears to have emerged in India, perhaps natural in a country that has always been obsessed with the game. Thomas says the market first began to form around 2008, when the first IPL was staged and the sports companies began to sell team-related merchandise.
Memorabilia of course is much more exclusive than mass-produced merchandise, and the best example of an organised market for it is probably the recent auction of cricket memorabilia held by Osian’s in Mumbai in September.
The top three sellers at the auction included: a bat used in the 1985 World Championship and signed by all players of the seven participating nations that sold for Rs 4,08,000; an autographed T-shirt’s of Harbhajan Singh, the one he wore when he took his 400th Test wicket, which sold for Rs 2,16,000; and the bat with which Anshuman Gaekwad scored 201 against Pakistan at Jalandhar in 1982-83. The bat was autographed by the batsman, and sold for Rs 2,04,000.
Total proceeds from the auction added up to Rs 35,96,400, and Osian’s says it is planning another auction. Neville Tuli, chairman of Osian’s, says that over time, objects that are a part of popular culture also become accepted as credible history, and therefore, valuable. The market for sporting memorabilia in India, he predicts, will mature over the next three to five years.