University student Cho Mo, 24, who has been following the LG Twins since she was in the fifth grade, went to four convenience stores in Seoul on the 14th.
She wanted to own a sports newspaper that featured the news of the LG Twins' first Korean Series title in 29 years on the front page.
But he didn't get it. Other customers had already bought them.
"I thought there would be newspapers in convenience stores, but when I looked for them, there weren't any," Cho said, adding that he plans to buy them on a second-hand site.
Another LG Twins fan, office worker Ra Jun-hyuk, 27, spent the entire day looking for a copy of the 14th edition of the sports paper, which featured LG's Korean Series victory on the front page, but was unsuccessful.
"A friend of mine who is an LG fan in the army asked me to get a newspaper, and I jokingly said, 'If I can't get one, how can I get yours,'" he said. "In the end, I asked another friend to get six copies of the daily delivered to my office and gave them to my friend."
On social media (SNS) and online community sites, there were posts from the previous day saying, "I managed to get only ○○ daily. If you want to exchange them, please send me a DM (direct message)," "I went around 15 newsstands and convenience stores in Seoul and barely bought a newspaper," "The old man at the newsstand said, 'Newspapers are selling well today,' and I replied that it was because of baseball,'" etc.
In fact, at seven newsstands in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on the afternoon of the 14th, there were sports newspapers with the LG Twins' victory on the front page. 토토사이트
Lee Kook-hee, 82, who runs the newsstand, said, "I usually sell one sports newspaper a day, but today, all five copies were sold before lunchtime." "So far, 30 to 40 people have come by and returned the sports newspapers," he said.
Another employee at a convenience store in Jongno-gu said, "When I told a student who came in in a hurry that sports newspapers were already sold out, he sighed and said, 'I'll have to buy this,' and bought a daily newspaper."
Sports newspapers usually cost about 1,000 won a copy, but to buy a 14-day newspaper, you have to pay a lot of money on the online secondary market.
The day before, there was a post on the second-hand trading platform 'Carrot Market' selling four copies of a sports newspaper for 200,000 won. A seller in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, wrote, "I'm selling the LG Twins newspaper that won the 2023 KBO Korean Series. I am selling 4 newspapers such as Sports○○ in bulk," and posted a photo of four sports newspapers.
On the leading second-hand trading site, 'Secondhand Nara', more than 150 posts offering to sell LG Twins-related 'goods' (souvenirs) were posted over the past three days from the 13th. The items range from glossy jumpers, a symbol of "fall baseball" (KBO postseason) for LG Twins fans, to uniforms and autographed balls. On March 4, a sports newspaper published a front-page photo of LG Twins players celebrating after the team won the regular season title. As the story went viral among fans, the newspaper printed and distributed 2,000 additional copies and even sold lenticular photo cards to fans, which change the picture depending on the angle at which they look at the ground.
Experts attribute the phenomenon to fans' search for emotional satisfaction.
"As young people are finding it difficult to find much energy in their lives, they are immersing themselves in goods that provide them with steady enjoyment and looking for value," said Lee Young-ae, a professor of consumer studies at Incheon National University. "It can be understood as a psychological phenomenon that fans are willing to express their happiness by purchasing merchandise when their favorite team wins."