After doing 5 selfies with people this morning before 8am on my morning run / walk I've come to the conclusion that the autograph is dead ! — Shane Warne (@ShaneWarne) May 27, 2014

Shane Warne has declared the autograph is over, saying his fans overwhelmingly favour a selfie with the spin king instead.



The former Australian cricketer predicted the end of the autograph on Wednesday, tweeting: “After doing 5 selfies with people this morning before 8am on my morning run/walk I've come to the conclusion that the autograph is dead!”



Sports memorabilia expert Michael Fahey says Warne makes a valid point. “The selfie is the ultimate record of your meeting with a celebrity or athlete,” he said.



But on the market, autographs still have an advantage. A signature can be easily passed between many fans and dealers. A picture on the other hand is “incredibly specific to one person”, he said.



Put simply: you can’t sell a selfie.



Killing off the humble signature would be the latest accolade in the life of the selfie, which, in a unanimous vote, was declared the 2013 word of the year by the Oxford Dictionary.



The term was allegedly coined by a hungover Australian university student, “Hopey”, in a post on the ABC website’s message forums in 2002.

"I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip,” he said of close-up photograph of his face. “And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie."

The linguistic pioneer’s identity has never been revealed, but his word, and the photographic form it describes, has surged into popular consciousness as cheap mobile phone cameras and social media have proliferated.

The former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd pioneered its use as a political campaigning tool, drawing a mixed response for his August 2013 selfie taken after his morning shave, complete with cuts.

That same month saw history’s first pontifical selfie, while in December US president Barack Obama decided Nelson Mandela’s memorial was the right time for his own snap with world leaders.

Television presenter Ellen Degeneres upped the stakes in March, cramming 12 actors including Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie into a “super-selfie”, which became the most retweeted photograph of all time and inspired countless imitators. It was later revealed to be part of a mobile phone marketing campaign.