Sports fans collect all sorts of paraphernalia to celebrate their interest in the sport. Baseball fans save baseball cards of favorite players, bats and balls, score cards and ticket stubs. The hockey fan has a puck from a game or buys a Wayne Gretzky stick. Autographs are big with fans. In fact, the collectors have made a large and profitable market in memorabilia, so large that an industry has developed in faking these mementoes.
     Locate sellers of sports material: What are prices of popular items? Is the market going up, down, stable? Conduct an e-mail interview with one of the sellers and, if possible, with some collectors.
     Locate some collectors and interview them about their collections and ask how they know their material is authentic.

     This stub from a ticket to the fourth game of the 1929 World Series was found in the papers of a former sports editor. His widow says it has sentimental value. But has it any monetary value? What do collectors say about rain checks from a World Series more than 75 years ago?
     The game was between the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Athletics in a series that the Athletics won four games to one. Bleacher seats in those days cost less than a dollar. But for the Series, the price went up to $1 a seat.