A Taylor Swift fan in Green Bay, Wisconsin, reportedly got her hands on a coveted box of signed Folklore CDs, but instead of selling them for big bucks, she did exactly what Taylor would have wanted her to: she turned them in.
Swifties were sent into a frenzy over the weekend when word leaked that the singer had shipped out signed copies of her surprise eighth LP to indie record stores around the nation.
Thirty of those golden tickets were reportedly sent to the Exclusive Co. shop in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Saturday morning (Aug. 22), only manager Tom Smith was not there when they arrived at 9:45 a.m. He said he knew the shipment was coming and had gotten calls from fans eager to get their hands on the exclusive versions of the low-key collection, which has lodged four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
Smith told Today that he’d let Swifties camp out outside the store in anticipation of the package’s arrival, but the only problem was that its doors don’t open until 10, so when the UPS truck dropped off the box, the unnamed fan gladly signed for it. At that point, she had a choice: tuck it and run, or wait for Smith to show up hand it over.
She reportedly did the latter, and when he opened the box there were 30 signed copies of Folklore waiting for the patient fans. “I said, ‘Thank you for not walking off with this,'” Smith told Today. “She goes, ‘Taylor would have not wanted me to walk off with this.'”
Smith told the Green Bay Press Gazette that the fan could have easily sold the loot box for at least $9,000 online. “It’s really endearing,” he told Today. “Taylor Swift does so much good with her celebrity, and you can see how it also trickles down to her fans.”
A spokesperson for Swift could not be reached for comment at press time.
Swift has given her diehards many different way to enjoy the album she recorded in secret during quarantine, releasing the physical deluxe edition of Folklore with eight alternate covers, as well as offering up “Chapter” versions to streaming services in which she re-works the album’s songs into new forms based on dramatic themes.