Has a stranger ever asked you for your used High Speed Rail (HSR) ticket after you exit the station?
Last year, the Liberty Times (Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported that two people were stopping passengers at the gates and requesting their stubs. A passenger noticed that they already had their hands on several.
It’s possible that these folks were HSR enthusiasts, but it’s more likely that they were looking to make a quick buck. E-commerce platforms such as Shopee, Yahoo Auctions and Ruten are teeming with such items with specific dates, destinations and ticket types, with prices ranging from about NT$30 to NT$500. There’s also a very active Facebook page with over 7,400 members dedicated to the selling and trading of the stubs.
Photo: Screen grab from Shopee
“For collection and commemorative purposes only,” many sellers emphasize, and the Facebook page warns, “Please don’t use them for other purposes.” Yeah, right.
Discussions on this phenomenon appear on the news and local forums from time to time; the Liberty Times first ran a story on it in 2008, a year after the HSR started operations. It heated up again this past week when one user asked on bulletin board system Professional Technology Temple (PTT) why these stubs sell so well. There are legitimate collection endeavors one can pursue — amassing stubs from all 132 possible journey combinations, for example, or tracking down ones where the dates or destinations have special meanings — but that can’t be just it.
‘PROOF OF ALIBI’
Photo: Cheng Wei-chi, Taipei Times
One Shopee vendor notes that people can select stubs showing their birthday, girlfriend’s birthday, children’s birthdays, various anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, New Year’s Eve … and, at the end of the unnecessarily long list, it adds: “proof of alibi.” That’s one of the alleged “darker” aspects of HSR stub collection: lying to your significant other or employer about your whereabouts.
Some bolder vendors don’t even bother to be coy: “For claiming reimbursements,” one Shopee user who has sold thousands of items for up to NT$300 each states in the item descriptions. Employees can use these to claim bogus travel expenses and commit other types of fraud, while companies can sweep them up to receive tax breaks.
The most common method, the reports say, is driving or taking cheaper transport to a business destination, then buying the HSR ticket online and pocketing the difference.
Photo: Taiwan High Speed Rail
Of course, this is illegal and offenders could face jail time for fraud, forgery or tax evasion. The 2008 article notes that online marketplaces vowed to crack down on such behavior and ban offending vendors, but the market in tickets is thriving more than ever.
Another way for vendors to acquire these stubs, other than accosting customers, is to rummage through garbage bins in and around the station. One woman told EBC News on Monday that she always rips up her ticket before tossing it for this reason. Another man said he only uses electronic tickets.
Browsing through the offers on Taiwan’s major e-commerce Web sites, one can pretty much find any date and route they wish to from the past year or two. Options are limited further back, although there’s curiously a decent supply of stubs from 2012 on Ruten. The oldest item currently listed on Shopee is a 2009 Hsinchu to Banciao ticket for NT$20.
Many vendors group them in listings according to month, and there aren’t any special or auspicious numbers particularly advertised. But it doesn’t take much digging to find, for example, a ticket from 2022/2/2 — and it costs just NT$35 since it was a one-stop journey from Tainan to Zuoying.
There are also hardly any limited edition or discontinued tickets going for high prices, probably due to the HSR being too new to generate nostalgia yet. By contrast, vintage Taiwan Railways Administration tickets from decades ago can fetch over NT$10,000.
The HSR used the same ticket design from its inception until 2018, so the old orange-colored stubs aren’t very valuable either, making one wonder really how “collectible” these stubs really are.
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