Bottled 'Olympic air', a used tissue or a Mary Poppins costume - the eBay sellers offering unusual London 2012 gifts...

 

Kevin Rawlinson
Friday 10 August 2012 12:58 BST
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An actor playing Mary Poppins in the opening ceremony
An actor playing Mary Poppins in the opening ceremony

Some people will be going home with a gold medal, some silver, others bronze, others only memories.

Even the spectators will have their own special memories and souvenirs of the London 2012 Games. But for those who didn’t make it to any of the events, how about some bottled Olympic air? Or, perhaps, a bit of tissue used to wipe one of the seats at the Opening Ceremony?

Some enterprising eBay users are offering some slightly dubious items for sale on the auction website. “So you weren’t one of the lucky ones, unable to travel to London for whatever reason and soak up the exhilarating atmosphere. Well maybe a little bit of that ambiance can come to you,” wrote one vendor using the pseudonym “mictoria”.

Bids were open until Sunday, “when the atmosphere goes back to normal”, with three would-be purchasers of the novelty item registering an interest with the highest at £10.50.

Other vendors offering bottled Olympic air - one of them claiming to have been “collected at the entrance to the Olympic Park only days ago” - has yet to attract any bids, though. One put an optimistic starting price tag of £49.99 on an empty plastic water bottle that could be bought immediately for £99.99 otherwise.

There was also a crumpled tissue on offer. “This was the tissue I used at the 2012 Opening Ceremony to wipe the seat with, it has some of the molecules of the Olympic atmosphere attached to it and I shall be sealing it in a plastic wallet so you can show it to your Grandchildren and so on,” declared “captainjay1701”. Bidders had yet to show any interest.

The auctions are, in a sense, following a precedent set by the Games organisers themselves, who are selling off various items used during the Olympics. The Mary Poppins costume used during the Opening Ceremony has attracted a high bid of £255 with two days to go in the auction. The auction on a Hockey ball used in men’s gold medal game has a similar period to run and has attracted a bid of £335, whereas the netting used in the men’s gold medal basketball game is set to go for at least £1,805.

There is even memorabilia from the last London Olympics, held in 1948. One of the torches used in the relay has a price of £14,000, although no bids have yet been placed with 20 days until the auction closes.

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