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#1
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There is significant interest in the history of soccer and certainly pre-Pele. There are countless high quality soccer museums, albeit they tend to be club or national specific. However, it is true that most of the icons of the game are from post-World War Two onwards and, other than historians, few could name any pre-World War One Stars with soccer history typically being well documented from the 1920s or so. Culturally, it is a very different sport to baseball. There is much less interest in game statistics (a good thing IMO, although statistical overload has crept in over the past two decades) and very few traditional soccer fans could ever, nor would want to, understand the US “franchise” model. The migration of the Dodgers and Giants from NYC to the west coast simply could not happen in soccer - if, for example, an owner tried to relocate Manchester United to London or Internazionale from Milan to Rome, there’d be civil unrest to an extent that the league would become unmanageable. However, from a collecting perspective, I believe the key difference is that cards are much less intrinsic to soccer culture than in baseball. For example, Gallaher was a large tobacco company formed in the north of Ireland (what would later become Northern Ireland). Certainly in the 1910s and 1920s, they were prolific issuers of cards of Irish (and English / Scottish) soccer players - they would presumably have been obtained by grandparents and great-grandparents of many soccer fans here in Northern Ireland but, although I know many collectors of soccer memorabilia here, few are interested in cards nor do I know of any who have an emotional attachment to cards based on their prior family generations having built up collections - albeit many were clearly retained as they are easy to purchase today in good condition. |
#2
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I’m not sure if cards (well, stickers) are less intertwined with soccer than baseball. Maybe it depends on the region. I know match programs were big in the UK but I think stickers predominated in South America. The Puskas and Nasazzi are both awesome cards. Always great to see any important Pre-War issues.
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#3
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Are cards (well, stickers) less intertwined with soccer than baseball?
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I think that soccer will increase in value because every 4 years kids around the entire world collect soccer stickers right now. These kids will all grow up into adults and will someday gain a disposable income (especially as the world economy becomes intertwined and lifts incomes in poorer countries). And these kids will want to buy into the nostalgia, just like I do. So I see that cards (stickers actually) are completely intertwined with soccer and will become more and more recognized as such in the generations to come. It does seem that this is less the case in England. And it is also not the case in the US. But in Italy and South America, parts of Asia and Eastern Europe, I think this is definitely the case. |
#4
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Which vintage soccer sets are most widely collected?
The T206 Wagner and 1952 Mantle aren't the rarest cards by any means, but the sets have a huge collector base, which attributes greatly to demand and value. My knowledge of soccer sets is limited, but I would be inclined to choose a card from a one of the more well-known companies - Panini, SADA, Lampo, Mira, etc. Cards/stickers from album sets can be especially condition sensitive, and in some cases near impossible to find in rare form. Many sets have scarce variations such as Panini's Valida backs which might be canidates for a holy-grail card consideration. |
#5
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This depends on the country
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Al Jurgela Looking for: 1910 Punch (Plank) 50 Hage's Dairy (Minoso) All Oscar Charleston Cards Rare Soccer cards Rare Boxing cards |
#6
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According to this guy, this the Wagner of soccer cards: https://www.ebay.com/itm/1902-J-F-Be...from=R40&rt=nc
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My flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/140288876@N04/albums |
#7
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Nice...
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#8
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Walk into any of the large soccer museums in Milan (for example, the San Siro Museum) and you won't see anyone fawning over a card - rather it will be old shirts, photos, medals and trophies. Have a look at soccer auction results and cards don't get the largest prices. |
#9
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#10
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Baseball is drowning in stats, but they do facilitate discussions of comparing players across different eras, which people always love. I think it's relatively harder to do that in a sport far less given to stats, and it could be (just theorizing) that the lack of stats is one reason casual fans may be less interested in greats of the distant past?
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My avatar is a sketch by my son who is an art school graduate. Some of his sketches and paintings are at https://www.jamesspaethartwork.com/ He is available to do custom drawings in graphite, charcoal and other media. He also sells some of his works as note cards/greeting cards on Etsy under JamesSpaethArt. |
#11
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Hockey has goal and assist numbers Pre-War (though assists were given out much less frequently) but Pre-War players are still dramatically underrated. A typical baseball top ten will be filled at least half with Pre-War players while a typical hockey one will not have any. I think baseball overrates Pre-War players since they played pre-integration (meaning that the “replacement level player” was much worse than today) but that hockey and perhaps soccer underrate them.
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My flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/140288876@N04/albums Last edited by Anish; 08-15-2018 at 07:56 AM. |
#12
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I think that is right, Peter
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I think that is right, Peter... and I think the international aspect makes it even more difficult. There are so many leagues, so many players and historically not much play between them except the World Cup and the Olympics in the pre-war discussion... not many TV clips or game footage. So between stats, language and inability to compare it because harder to do that and there are no guides (that I know of) that consolidate the information. Many top soccer historians go a great job, but all the work is piece-mail. I am planning to consolidate some of this information in a book that I think will be helpful for collectors and I will base my information off of other people's historical efforts. In other words, I will try and show some collecting options of the players that most historians think were exceptional in their times which for me should always be the standard. I generally like to look at the IFFHS site and read their articles. They try to rank clubs, leagues and players... They are now in the process of defining some legends that you can see here: https://iffhs.de/iffhs-has-announced...egend-players/ Unfortunately they are even highly focused on post war players. If you look at all the people on this (somewhat political - note the inclusion of players from China and Kuwait) list only Stanley Matthews played many of his great years prior to WWII - so it is basically a post war list. This is phase one of their work and I am not sure how many phases there are. You can click on players and there are (albeit too brief) descriptions of the players and many have YouTube videos with clips of some of their antics. Check out the one on Zico and him amazing free kicks from outside of the box. Anyway, it all starts with interest and education and I believe that, in time, these things will come to US collectors. Also when the World Cup in here in the USA, I imagine that there will be much more interest as well.
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Al Jurgela Looking for: 1910 Punch (Plank) 50 Hage's Dairy (Minoso) All Oscar Charleston Cards Rare Soccer cards Rare Boxing cards |
#13
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Some of the earlier Spanish cards of the 1920s through to 1940s are great and can be picked up at low prices. I am not a card colector nor claim knowledge of cards but I do buy these types of items regularly and have other Irish cards of well known footballers of the pre war era that are very rare - albeit not necessarily valuable. |
#14
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Very cool insight
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Al Jurgela Looking for: 1910 Punch (Plank) 50 Hage's Dairy (Minoso) All Oscar Charleston Cards Rare Soccer cards Rare Boxing cards |
#15
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Question for an Expert
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However, the reason I collect cards is because as a child it let me get close to my baseball heroes. I love baseball and was never very good, and loved to pull out my cards so that I could feel close to the game. Also, cards make a good collectible because of their size. So, Ulidia, I am curious if you were to take a poll of 20 kids in the neighborhood or at the soccer stadium, how many collect soccer stickers and if not, do they collect anything else that does let them feel close to the game (magazines, jerseys, etc.)? My hypothesis is that lack of nostalgia from kids not collecting baseball cards today will lead to a dearth of baseball card collectors in 30 - 40 years. But because kids today collect stickers around the world (especially Panini WC stickers), that soccer cards will become more and more popular over the next 30 - 40 years. I really am interested in knowing if kids in your neighborhood or who you meet at the soccer stadium collect stickers now. |
#16
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OK... one more candidate for this futile cause
OK guys, some of you may have seen my posting on Leonidas Da Silva, but probably my favorite card of his (and one of my favorite soccer cards in general), if the 1950 Tinghalls Leonidas.
This card (and all of the Sao Paulo issues) of Tinghalls are exceedingly rare and I know of just three copies of this card. It appears that they were made to celebrate a tour of the Sao Paulo team in Sweden. The last time that I saw this card at auction was about 5 years ago or so and it brought $800. I did not win that card and had to pay much more than that to get this copy. Anyway, enjoy.
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Al Jurgela Looking for: 1910 Punch (Plank) 50 Hage's Dairy (Minoso) All Oscar Charleston Cards Rare Soccer cards Rare Boxing cards |
#17
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#18
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That being said, many people collect items from before their time (myself included) as opposed to items from their childhood.
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#19
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Program collecting would be the closest UK sports comparable to baseball card collecting albeit much smaller values at the high end i.e. it still raises eyebrows when a program sells over $10k or equivalent. However, program collecting is slowly declining - prices have been falling generally (or at best static for really top end items) for over a decade. More so, this will be significantly impacted by the increasing decision of clubs not to issue program for individual games - so fewer kids will get into the hobby. Ultimately, the match day program may, to some extent, go the same way as the daily newspaper. Cards were collected in the past. Since Panini (and a number of rivals) made it big here some decades ago, cards were eclipsed by stickers as a collectible. Kids do collect Panini stickers but, in the 1980s and 1990s they sold much higher numbers than today. Interestingly, the attraction to Panini stickers here tends to be more from adults who did collect them and swap them in the prior generations. To give you an example, my beloved Northern Ireland qualified for the 2016 European Championships, the first tournament they qualified for since 1986. It elicited excitement for many people of my age (heading towards mid 40s) because it meant we’d have Northern Ireland in a Panini sticker album for the first time since the 1986 World Cup. I’ve got completed 1982 & 1986 Panini albums because of the Northern Ireland team. So there’s definitely a place for stickers / cards but, of the serious collectors over here (serious in terms of money spent, albeit generally modest versus US), they don’t want to spend their money on stickers or cards of players. |
#20
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For anyone interested in the UK soccer sticker craze (started by Panini) of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, there is a very good documentary called “Stuck on You”.
For some reason, I do not appear able to add a link but search “stuck on you Panini” on YouTube to access it. |
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