If you’ve always had a burning desire for a Chargers Pez dispenser, a Bolt-inspired shower curtain or the hundreds of other trinkets you can snatch up on the Internet, now’s your chance.
The winding down of the team’s 2015 season – and according to many analysts and online commenters, the end of the team being called the San Diego Chargers – has prompted a free-for-all of fan gear on Craigslist.
Just type “Chargers” in on the vendor site and more than 1,200 results will show up, including a number of hits for tickets to the Chargers-Dolphins game this Sunday.
“Keep in mind this will most likely be the last Chargers game in SD,” one ticket seller states.
And it’s not just tickets being peddled. Autographed photos and helmets from every era are up for grabs.
One guy in North Park, Manny Rose, is selling 3,000 trading cards for $1,200 featuring players from 1960 to 2013.
He said he started collecting them at age 6.
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You can’t just buy one. “I want to sell the collection as a whole,” he states in the ad.
Asked if the sale of his collection has to do with the Bolts' woes, Rose said no. He's actually been trying to sell them for two years.
"We are going to pay our mortgage," he said. "I was thinking about maybe taking them down, but perseverence is one of my virtues, so I'm just going to keep hanging in there ... It only takes one person. Maybe one of the Charger players would like to have it for their collection?"
And then there’s the “finely crafted California red table wine” dubbed the “Jim Laslavic Wine,” paying homage to the linebacker who played from 1973 to 1982 (later becoming our NBC 7 sports director). That goes for $50 in La Costa.
Whatever’s being sold on the Internet, the bevy of items serve as a barometer for how fans are feeling about the odds of the San Diego Chargers becoming the Los Angeles Chargers.
But as NBC 7 sports reporter Derek Togerson aptly points out, what if, in the end, the Bolts end up staying in town?
