"Newspaper With Front-Page Photo for 100,000 Won": Shortage After Samsung Lions' First Title in 12 Years

Netizens seek out newspapers featuring championship photos on the front page
A listing offering one for "100,000 won" also appears on a secondhand marketplace

Fans are scrambling to get newspapers as “bang-for-your-buck merchandise” after the Samsung Lions won the Korean Series for the first time in 12 years.

A post on Threads seeking a newspaper commemorating the Samsung Lions’ championship. SNS screenshot.

On November 9, several posts seeking newspapers with a Samsung Lions photo on the front page appeared on social media and secondhand trading platforms. The posts followed the Lions’ win the previous day in the Shinhan SOL KBO Korean Series, where they clinched the title with a 4-1 series record. This was the team’s ninth Korean Series title overall and its first in 12 years.

Samsung fans who had been waiting for the Lions to win the title are scrambling to find morning newspapers published on the day after the championship, November 9, with photos of the team’s title celebration on the front page. Posts seeking to collect “championship newspapers” have reportedly appeared for not only national and sports dailies but also newspapers from the Daegu area.

Online, posts showing proof of newspaper purchases have been appearing one after another. They range from accounts of people buying newspapers after going to work 30 minutes earlier than usual to posts proudly displaying newspapers of various kinds featuring Samsung on the front page. Some are spreading out the newspapers, taking photos so the championship images are clearly visible, and sharing them on social media.

One user wrote, “I want to get the newspapers, but there aren’t many places selling them nearby, so I barely managed to get the sports section of the Chosun Ilbo and plan to collect the rest from blogs.” Another user wrote, “It seems to be becoming a popular, bang-for-your-buck collectible, with people thinking, ‘If not now, when will they win again?’ I went to a convenience store and bought the last two copies of the newspaper for 2,000 won.” A copy of a sports daily featuring a front-page photo capturing the Samsung Lions’ title-winning moment was also listed for sale on an online secondhand trading platform for 100,000 won.

This is not the first time newspapers have become scarce the day after a professional baseball team wins the title. When the LG Twins won the 2023 Korean Series for the first time in 29 years, copies of Sports Seoul carrying the championship news also sold out quickly. At the time, Sports Seoul printed an additional 1,000 copies of a reprint edition and distributed 2,000 copies, including a special edition featuring pages from the team’s 1994 championship.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.