For more than 40 years, Laurent has been tracking these small pieces of cardboard measuring 6.5 x 3 cm, which circulate in our pockets, our wallets or which have littered the floors of Paris metro stations for nearly 121 years. The metro ticket is his passion, his obsession. This esiteriophile has been collecting them since he was 16 years old. “I have always had the soul of a collector, even as a child. With the metro ticket, I found a fascinating object, which has no value, which can be found endlessly and which tells something about us, about people's daily lives. These are small slices of life that fit in the hand and there is something fascinating in looking for them, in retracing their history, ”says this father. Today, at 59 years old, the one we can nickname "Ticketman" holds more than 400,000 specimens,carefully stored in a fully dedicated room, its “ticket room”. “I have some who come from all over the world, because it's not just in Paris that there is the metro. I have them from China, Poland, Spain, Germany, London… and from all eras ”, details the almost sixty-year-old.
Read also The great history of the Paris metro ticket
By opening its large cupboards, hundreds of albums, listed alphabetically by city and country, take up every square inch of space.
“I'm running out of space.
And I still have some lying around in dozens of shoeboxes.
I still have something to take care of for a while, even when the metro ticket is completely gone, ”he smiles.
Because by March 2022, the cardboard ticket book, already endangered in most European countries, will be withdrawn from sale.
“I'm a little sad but that was to be expected.
We will say goodbye to the cardboard ticket, but other media will replace it.
Like the “Navigo Easy”.
I am therefore not about to hang up, ”concludes the collector.