Ｏｌｙｍｐｉｃ　Ｍｅｒｃｈａｎｄｉｓｅ：Ｍｏｎｅｙ，Ｍｅｍｏｒｉｅｓ　ａｎｄ　Ｍｅｍｏｒａｂｉｌｉａ.docVIP

Ｏｌｙｍｐｉｃ　Ｍｅｒｃｈａｎｄｉｓｅ：Ｍｏｎｅｙ，Ｍｅｍｏｒｉｅｓ　ａｎｄ　Ｍｅｍｏｒａｂｉｌｉａ 　　Olympic merchandise appreciates rapidly and at a high rate ?C the price of a 2004 Olympics souvenir badge, for example, has gone up 10 fold,” says Gu Bingfu, director of the Sports Branch of the China Association of Collectors. “The price of a poster from the 1988 Seoul Olympics sold for RMB 1,500 in recent years.” Yet the original price of many of these items was quite cheap. Over 5,000 varieties of Olympic merchandise are currently available in shops around the country, ranging from RMB 8 pens to pieces of metalwork costing RMB 500,000. 　　Many local shoppers are buying merchandise as gifts, especially around traditional Chinese festivals. Olympic souvenirs are considered a generous and tasteful choice, with collection value to boot. Sales in the Olympic merchandise flagship store on Beijing’s Wangfujing shopping mall reached RMB 800,000 on the outlet’s opening day, and since then the shop has become a must-see attraction for many tourists. According to one staff member, besides the best-selling Fuwa Olympic mascots, expensive pure gold “Bird’s Nest” stadiums are selling like hotcakes. 　　 　　Serious Collecting 　　 　　Tu Yueming is famous in Beijing as an Olympics stamp collector. The five rings of the Olympic flag hang in the window of his home, woven in Chinese knots. Inside, two big boxes of Olympic stamps represent 25 years of collecting. It’s a mark of his dedication that Tu laid out RMB 88 in a stamp market to complete his second set of commemorative Beijing Olympics stamps. They originally sold for RMB 9.6 at the post office. 　　“The Chinese people have been waiting a century for the Beijing Olympics,?Tu says with a smile. 揂s early as 1908, when a track meet organized by Tianjin Young Men?s s Christian Association was held at Nankai University, there were three striking questions written across the playground wall: ‘When will China send an outstanding athlete to the Olympic Games?’, ‘When will China send