"I got carried away, but I'm happy." Such was the reaction of Dina, a former Gamesmaker from Stratford, East London, after becoming the first successful bidder in London 2012's final auction of items and memorabilia, held on Saturday in the bowels of a Midlands football stadium.

Dina, an Arabic speaker who had worked as a driver for the Iraqi Paralympic Committee during the Paralympics, had her eye on items further down the list.

But she proved unable to resist Lot 1, splurging £460 ($712/€546) on a Team GB cycling jersey signed by Britain's most successful Olympian, Sir Chris Hoy.

As we spoke, James Pugh - an auctioneer with a Herefordshire burr, a winning smile and, it turned out, Radcliffesque reserves of stamina - drew bidders' attention to a pair of diving sensation Tom Daley's swimming trunks.

"Just don't wash 'em and get rid of the signature," he sagely advised.

Moments later, the gavel descended and the coffers of LOCOG, the London 2012 Organising Committee, were enriched by a further £540 ($836/€642), or the lion's share thereof.

A pair of Tom Daley's Team GB swimming trunks sold for £540

No doubt some of us will continue to bang on about Olympic legacy long into the future, but in other respects these truly are the last knockings of Britain's decade-long Olympic adventure.

This weekend, in the one-time capital of the British car manufacturing industry, LOCOG liquidated the detritus from one of the most spectacular parties the world has ever seen.

On May 23, it is expected to hold a final board meeting.

And that, really, will be that.

Even in this twilight of the Olympic gods, however, it is amazing how the Olympic spirit continues to animate large numbers of ordinary Britons.

The turnout at the Ricoh Arena was extraordinary.

I felt as sheepish being ushered in past a snaking queue of people waiting patiently to gain access to a massive garage-sale of items deemed not valuable enough for the auction, as I had more than 20 years before when jumping a similar line-up to get into Leningrad's Hermitage Museum.

Almost everyone I spoke to seemed surprised at how many had come - and it must be a few years since that could be said at the home of Coventry's perennially underperforming football team, busy eking out a point in Nottingham while the sale was going on.

London 2012 duvets, at £35 ($54/€42) a time, were sold out in no time.

But in spite of the queues and the bustle, the mood was upbeat - just as last summer the sullen silence of the London tube had been transformed - temporarily - by an efflorescence of Olympic bonhomie.

Dina's winning bid was one of several to elicit a good-natured burst of applause.


And when a man who had bid determinedly for Lot 111, the scarecrow from Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony, lost out to a virtual rival, who bid £2,020 ($3,127/€2,400) via the internet, the room aaahed in sympathy.

What, I asked him, had he been planning to do with a man-sized scarecrow? (He didn't look the agricultural type.)

"I run an ad agency; we are voted as the 10th-most inspirational place to work in Britain.

"I was trying to get the scarecrow for reception," he told me.

Undaunted, this chief executive moved onto another Opening Ceremony artefact - a punk rocker head - and this time emerged victorious.

Visitors to WAA in Sutton Coldfield can expect to see it on display some place.

Among the happiest campers were a lady who paid £100 ($155/€119) for some of those huge Tempest books from the Paralympic opening ceremony - "It was my prop," she shouted - and a 23-year-old primary school teacher who picked up a black model horse's head, and hooves, for just £20 ($31/€24).

"Oh my God, it's brilliant," the teacher, Charlotte Fallows, exclaimed, when I asked if it was worth it.

She plans to install the beast at her one-bedroom Aldgate flat.

"I think it would look amazing on the wall."

Fallows and Jason Osborne, her attendant bag-carrier, had left London at 6am to reach the sale in good time.


Items on sale ranged from the obligatory Olympic torches to bibs worn by canoe slalom competitors.

One of the oddest lots was a blue Rover car bonnet signed by "multiple Great British Sporting Legends".

Bidders were informed that the related car, with "a full year MOT", was available for an extra £750 ($1,161/€891).

The bonnet fetched £700 ($1,0834/€832).

Everywhere in evidence was LOCOG boss Lord Coe's signature on certificates of authenticity, like an Olympic version of the man who signs British banknotes.

I decided enough was enough when the indefatigable Mr Pugh started inviting offers for the office furniture at LOCOG's Canary Wharf HQ.

As I exited, the sound system outside was playing Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols.

It seemed appropriate.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. To follow him on Twitter click here.