How public transport tickets give you a peek into history

Like stamps, public transport tickets are history in shorthand. British Railway Tickets by Jan Dobrzynski recently led me to this observation. The book traces the journey all the way back to dockets, the predecessor of railway tickets. It explains the circumstances surrounding the birth of the ‘Edmondson ticket’ in the 1840s. The humble railway ticket was actually a disruptive innovation of those times. As Dobrzynski presents ticket after ticket, one gets a peek into the early days of the railways in the United Kingdom.

The country has many collectors, who treat not only railway tickets, but all public transport tickets, as the valuable pieces of paper they are.

The hobby derives strength from groups formed around it. The best-known of them is the 72-year-old Transport Ticket Society (transport-ticket.org.uk). Collectors of train, bus and tram tickets, its members are spread across the world. With a monthly journal and regular initiatives to engage members, it remains an active society.

The book and this group have made me acutely aware of a missed opportunity in India. Ten years ago, when I was writing a column about collectors of antique and rare things, I would occasionally meet someone who had put aside transport tickets. One such person was S B Raja Seetharaman, a philatelist-numismatist and also a collector of offbeat things. He was struck down in the prime of life due to a freak accident. A few months before the tragic incident, when I visited him, he schlepped out his various accumulations. There was a bunch of public transport tickets, considered a part of his secondary collections. Unfortunately, even the best collectors relegate transport tickets to the ‘miscellaneous’ category.

Tickets from the past can offer a timeline of public transport history, enabling a clearer understanding of rare developments. For example, there was a major revision of bus fares in Tamil Nadu in January 2018, sparking protests and debates. An exhaustive collection of tickets over the years along with information pertaining to past revisions in fares, could have vividly illustrated some of the issues that led to the recent one.

Hobbies known by a striking name pique curiosity, an essential factor aiding their growth. Unfortunately, the hobby of collecting transport tickets does not seem to have one.

It is, however, first cousin to the hobby of collecting transportation tokens, which is described in one impressive word. Collectors of these coins, minted in a variety of metals and used as a substitute for money or as an addition to it, are called vecturists. These coins come in fetching designs, which include letters traced in cutouts. As a result, these are easy to collect, survive many years, and are regularly advertised on online selling-buying platforms. The hobby has a noticeable following in America, Canada and the UK.

The 70-year-old American Vecturist Association (AVA), accessible at vecturist.com, is the flagbearer of this hobby. AVA brings out The Fare Box, a monthly journal on the hobby that is a delight to read. The talk relating to the hobby is interspersed with interesting accounts of personal engagement with it. One can flip through old issues, accessing them through archives.org.

Perhaps collectors of transportation tickets can be clubbed with vecturists, and assigned the position of a sub-group. Or should we create a whole separate word for it factoring in the possibility of tickets going the digital way, making paper tickets more valuable?