To look forward, we must first take a step back and ask ourselves what role souvenirs have played throughout history.

The urge to make distant places tangible by collecting objects predates recorded history. Scholar Beverly Gordon notes: "People have a need to take things home from a sacred, extraordinary time or place because home is equated with the ordinary and mundane. They can not hold on to the non-ordinary experience, because it's ephemeral by nature, but they can hold on to a tangible piece of it, an object that came from there."

This explains many examples of pilgrims taking home physical fragments of the destination or the experience itself. The Sanctuary of the Ascension was built to commemorate Christ's last moment on earth. Part of the sanctuary's floor had been left unpaved, and tradition asserted that Jesus' footprints could still be seen in the exposed earth. The pilgrims were eager to possess some of the dust that had touched the feet of the Messiah, and began to spirit away fistfuls of the sanctuary to such an extent that the shrine’s caretakers were forced to bring in new soil every few weeks.

Even I took a piece of the Berlin Wall home with me on my first trip abroad at the age of 10.

And a key defense against our primal urge to collect and scrutinize was that heritage sites established gift stores. Based on this urge, a large industry developed over the years - a U.S. souvenir and gift market that brings in $19 billion of revenue each year.

At one point, the Paris police busted unlicensed sellers, seizing 20 tons of unlicensed miniature Eiffel Towers. Yes, the numbers are correct. 

Already in the 1960s, art historian Gillo Dorfles wrote: "The world as it appears to the tourist, vomits kitsch all over itself."

And a lot of the kitsch possibly comes from the same factory, like the one from Charles Zhao in Wenzhou, China. One Paris souvenir store owner put up small signs indicating certain items were made in France. This only underscores the fact that a majority of the souvenirs sold there (and in most Paris gift shops ) were manufactured in faraway Chinese factories.

Today, we live in an era of crap souvenirs. Literally:

And we will stay in the era of crappy souvenirs for many years to come, do not worry. Not that this is a negative aspect, quite the opposite. Souvenirs are not really about the object itself, but rather about our relationship to that object. Souvenirs are a metaphor for how lived experience can give personal meaning to almost any object.

But as we wrote in our litepaper, because of all the changes happening in society in the way we live, travel and interact with each other, we see a need for new types of experiences and connections. And we also see an opportunity for new kinds of souvenirs.

In a sense, the search for authenticity in a particular travel souvenir is not so much about the object itself as it is about the traveler's sense of self-identity. So why not offer this new, growing group of Web3 users and NFT collectors a way to remember their travel experiences?

And like it or not, the metaverse is one of the hottest trends. One of the best explanations of what a metaverse is can be found in this Twitter thread - https://twitter.com/shaanvp/status/1454151237650112512

It's not a place, but the moment in time when (to some people) our digital lives are worth more to us than our physical lives. And this gradual change has taken place over the last 20 years. We used to pay 100% of our attention to our physical surroundings, but technology is slowly changing that. We spend way too much time on our phones curating our digital personas while detaching from the physical one.

And where attention goes, energy flows. And where energy flows, money follows.

In the recent Slovenian podcast, Andrej P. Škraba also predicts that in the future a couple will spend more on their digital home than on their real one (https://www.instagram.com/p/CkQ_FNGIWGj/).

Digital (living) souvenirs are next

Digital souvenirs open up novel possibilities to make souvenirs "come alive".

Digital souvenirs equipped with new technologies such as VR and AR could have the potential to recreate the experience for the user themselves. Today's age of quick weekend getaways on cheap flights diminishes experienced reality and souvenirs can serve as cues by which we can relive the experience at a slower pace.

Its NFT component brings into play several advantages that the souvenir seller can incorporate:

1. The user could present his NFTs to others in their metaverse gallery as advertisements of status and importance. Just as in the past nobles had their own Wunderkammern. **
   **

1. The interoperability of NFTs would allow souvenirs to be used in multiple "metaverses" (read apps). Imagine buying a medieval sword when you visit Urquhart Castle that you can use in a fighting game or simply hang it in your virtual office.

2. NFTs give you access. Your souvenir could give you access to events and additional content even after your trip is over. The huge potential of all destinations and museums for after-visit experiences.

3. NFTs give issuers wallet addresses. Usually, people buy a souvenir and leave the destination. You have nothing - no real data. Imagine if you had all the wallet addresses of people who have shown interest in a particular cultural heritage. You can build a community around it, connect people around a shared interest, etc.

Lots of potentials. Unfortunately, we are currently in a phase where not only many souvenirs are crap, also many NFTs are.

For this reason, I really liked a term coined by New Frontier for NFTs in tourism: Living Souvenirs. This opens up new layers for what souvenirs in tourism can be, enabled by new technologies (NFTs). That said, we can completely distance ourselves from the hype, the floor prices, etc. that are present in the NFT space.

I learned the term too late. That's why we still call them NFTs in our first project with digital souvenirs. But I can easily explain to you why they are not just NFTs. It's not even about their art. But the NFT represents so much more. With the purchase of the Maribor Lost & Found NFT postcard collection you get:

• a real physical postcard sent to your address or you can surprise a friend with a custom message

• a postcard is signed by illustrators, which cannot be purchased otherwise

• a postcard that you can listen to (each card has a story that you can listen to)

• access to a closed community

• 20 % discount on souvenirs in the Rajzefiber store in Maribor, Slovenia

• eternal appreciation from Rajzefiber for supporting the intangible cultural heritage of Maribor

• you are prone to future drops and utility

In this respect, it is a living souvenir. It can give you a classic souvenir relationship = a (digital) object through which something (a place, a person, an experience) is remembered.

Note: This role can be performed equally well by a kitschy souvenir from a Chinese factory that you can buy for 3 €.

But the living souvenir can give so much more. I am excited about this "so much more." So many things to test and build. It's as if a whole new medium has come to the Souvenir Town to give them more layers, meanings and ways to use them.

Resources

• Souvenir (Object Lessons) by Rolf Potts (2018)

• Crap Souvenirs: The ultimate Kitsch Collection by Doug Lansky (2012)

• Tourist trappings: why we all love a tacky souvenir fridge magnet accessible on Guardian (2022)

• The Living Souvenir on YouTube (2022)

• Maribor Lost & Found NFT Postcards

You can support us by collecting this article as an NFT.

Or get yourself a nice collectible postcard ( that can also be a souvenir, depends on your personal relationship to the object) at: