Tuesday 1 July 2008

Gordon Banks, Pelé, Desmond Tutu and me (2)

It looks as though the chance to play in that Gordon Banks XI v Pelé XI celebrity charity football game at the Britannia Stadium, Stoke, on 12 July (complete with half-time team talk by Archbishop Desmond Tutu), has gone to a dealer. The one consolation in not being able to afford the winning bid of £3,101 was that someone who’d really appreciate it would get the chance to turn out at the Britannia and the three grand would be going to a good cause.

The nominated charities will still get the money, but almost certainly not out of the pocket of ebay member dave100166, who placed the winning bid. Dave is an autograph dealer and since his bid also entitles him to keep the match ball, signed by Banks, Pelé and Tutu, plus a full kit and all sorts of other memorabilia (which he’ll probably also get signed by the stars of the occasion), he stands to make what could eventually be a tidy profit on it all.

I’d like to suggest that the organisers of the event now invest in a couple of hundred footballs and get Banks, Pelé and Tutu to sign them all. It would raise a few extra thousand for charity and undercut Dave’s profiteering at a stroke.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have never understood why people will pay such enormous amounts of money for someone's signature. Unless it's on the bottom of a contract of course.

A signature has no use value, no aesthetic value, only commodity and speculative value. What would Marx have made of it, I wonder?