Did you hear about the five hotel workers that stole goods from hotel rooms of the England soccer team? While they may have wanted World Cup souvenirs, it cost them $800 in fines and three years in prison. They stole World Cup soccer shirts, a medal and even player underwear! There’s no need for such nonsense, because you can find official FIFA World Cup souvenirs everywhere, (some are sanctioned and some aren’t).

Just like any other kinds of sports memorabilia, you want the real FIFA-sanctioned souvenirs, but native South Africa wares didn’t really dominate too many of the souvenirs made for the 2010 World Cup. If you visited Africa anytime before the World Cup, you might have seen carved wooden figurines, made by African craftsmen, but the ones that are FIFA-sanctioned wooden soccer players were actually made in Indonesia! It was too difficult to find that many artisans willing to go through the sanctioning process in Africa, but the different team outfits were painted on by artisans in Africa, at least.

When you are searching for authentic World Cup African-made artifacts, there are few that can be found for this reason, but if you are a soccer fan, you can find many FIFA World Cup sports memorabilia choices. There are soccer jerseys, hoodies, collector glass sets, key lanyards, soccer shorts and all kinds of other fan apparel, so you are sure to find something to add to your sports memorabilia. If you haven’t gotten your FIFA World Cup souvenirs, it’s not too late and you can find them quite easily on the Internet, probably along with some more interesting trivia stories about them!

Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium fans were swiping stadium souvenirs that ranged from pieces of seats from Shea Stadium to pieces of the red-white and blue outfield bunting that decorated Yankee Stadium! Leave it to New York…..of course, the teams want to make sure Stadium fixtures stay in their control, but somebody even stole a Yankee Stadium toilet seat. Stadiums that are older and get closed allow the teams to sell the rights to stadium souvenirs for profit and charity. That means you can buy bricks, seats and other parts of the stadiums because it has become a fund-raising event for all of the major league teams that have a stadium closing in their recent history.

Chicago White Sox’s Comiskey Park closing netted more than a million dollars for charity and other teams want to do the same thing. In fact, in the case of the 86-year old Yankee Stadium and the Shea Stadium, there was a third-party company hired to salvage the stadium souvenirs and the team gets a cut of the action, along with the City of New York, who owns the stadiums.

While Yankee’s players scooped up cups of dirt on their own, anything else they wanted had to be bought, when going on the auction block. Some of the sports fans that love stadium souvenirs just want a piece of a memory, but there are many that buy them as an investment because there is an active market in stadium souvenirs, just like there is with other types of sports memorabilia. It seems that stadium closings have created a sports souvenir class that appeals to many people, just make sure you are purchasing from authorized contractors offering a COA!