Two significant events last year — former Lakers star Dwight Howard joining Taiwan’s T1 professional basketball league and the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in Qatar — underscored the vast economic potential that sports memorabilia could have in Taiwan.
There has always been a market for such products, with loyal supporters purchasing series representing their favorite athletes, a jersey seller who wished to be called A-le (阿樂) said.
Before Howard joined the Taoyuan Leopards, he had announced the decision on his Instagram account, leading to a local surge in demand for replicas of his basketball jersey.
Photo: Hsu Sheng-lun, Taipei Times
Howard began playing for the Taoyuan Leopards in November.
A-le said the value of Howard’s jersey increased fivefold after the announcement, from less than NT$1,000 during his career in the US.
Even second-hand jerseys with some blemishes were being fought over, he said.
Some hunt for these peripheral products not to wear, but to keep in a collection, A-le said.
It was similar to when people sought out jerseys or sneakers when Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls during their two sets of three consecutive championships from 1991-1998, he said.
Some also hunt exclusively for Jordan’s Washington Wizards jersey after he returned to the game in 2001 after retiring, he said.
Interest in the Leopards had been waning before Howard joined the team, but enthusiasm skyrocketed after the announcement, with tickets for the team’s matches at their home arena selling out quickly and ticket prices doubling this month.
The Leopards’ home arena in Taoyuan created a designated area for Howard-related products, highlighting the effect of a former professional NBA star on Taiwan’s peripheral sports goods market.
FIFA products covered the globe last year, boosted by stars such as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo playing at the event.
A-le said he noticed at least five Taipei MRT stations selling FIFA-related jerseys, vacuum flasks and towels in special areas for vendors.
Sports lotteries also sold very well during the FIFA playoffs, lottery stand owners said.
However, A-le said that consumers should be cautious about cheap knockoffs and counterfeits entering the market when certain events raise demand.
One way to immediately spot a counterfeit is when the wrong logo or font is used, and fake jerseys easily become unstitched, while fake shoes and sneakers tend to fall apart from inferior glue, A-le said.
A-le advises enthusiasts to find authorized distributors or reputable sellers, specifically brick-and-mortar stores or official Web sites.
When making online purchases, the seller’s online reviews should be scrutinized, and in-person transactions should be preferred.
Meanwhile, a basketball card vendor at Taipei’s Tonghua Night Market who wished to be called Baoge (寶哥) said the market has been busier than it had been in the past two years, with enthusiasts and collectors taking advantage of Internet transactions and online exchange platforms to sell rare, valuable cards.
A veteran collector who wished to be identified only by the surname Hu (胡) said the crux of card collection is to find the right “key card,” often the rookie card of the team.
This is because a first-year rookie card for any player becomes more difficult to find the longer they stay in the sport, and the more famous they become, Hu said.
If a rookie becomes an all-star player, the card can become exceptionally valuable, he added.
However, an exact investment and return ratio on cards can be difficult to calculate, Hu said.
A person could spend a large sum of money on a rookie card for a player who seems to be excelling at the sport, but is later benched and fails to live up to potential because of injuries, he said.
However, Kobe Bryant’s rookie card was sold for US$10 at the time of issue, and one sold for US$2 million in February last year, he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching