Michael From time to time, invisible company fairies at Yahoo place small gifts on the desks of hard-working engineers. A few tickets for a baseball game here, a sweet treat there, and rows of so-called "swag" (or "schwag"), the technical term for the trinkets you get handed at conferences and trade shows. Another word for these promotional gifts is Tchotchke, a term originating from Yiddish, which has its roots in the Slavic word for 'toy'.
One morning, I found a Starbucks card with a Yahoo logo worth 5 dollars on my keyboard, which I happily put in my wallet and immediately discarded the accompanying envelope in the recycling bin. Later, I found out that there are crazy collectors who pay good money for such cards on eBay. Word got around that the Yahoo-Starbucks cards, printed in limited editions, sometimes fetched up to 100 dollars at auctions.
A kind of gold rush set in, dozens of the cards appeared on eBay, and the market slowly collapsed. I finally got rid of mine, including the one with the envelope fished out of the trash can, for $65. Surely, the collector is happy about the new showpiece in their album.
Greetings from the crazy country:
Angelika & Michael