The Most OVERLOOKED Investment in Sports Cards

With all the attention being put on sports cards today and all of the investment money rushing into the hobby, it's hard to find segments of the sports card market that are maybe underappreciated under invested and may have the potential to really grow in the years ahead. But today, I think we have found one for you. Today we're going to be talking about vintage soccer cards. Vintage soccer. This could be the next big thing in the sports card hobby as it continues to grow globally. And right now, only a small segment of collectors are really focused on this collecting niche. So today in Studio, I brought in a vintage soccer expert, Al Gargella, who is going to walk us through everything you need to know about investing in vintage soccer cards. Let's get started. The Jeff Wilson show is brought to you by Arena Club, the official home of Slab packs. Now available every day, Slab packs offer an exciting way to collect graded cards with confidence. Plus, every pack comes with an instant offer to buy your slab. Don't miss out. Explore the latest slap hacks and more by downloading the Arena Club app. Just search Arena Club in the App Store and use promo code SCI for 20% off your first purchase. Al welcome to the Arena Club Studio Inside Cards hq. Hey, thanks, Jeff. I really appreciate the invite and really timely here with the World Cup. Really excited to be here and talk about vintage soccer. It is very timely and that's why I wanted to do this episode. I think, you know, we, we had such a great World cup and now people, a lot of people bought soccer cards for the first time over the last several months or maybe people who had soccer collections, they probably expanded quite a bit over the last few months as they were enjoying the World Cup. But you know, the World cup obviously helped bring more Americans into this sport and helped certainly raise the excitement around soccer for Americans. The hobby is growing, not just in America though now is getting an extra boost from the World cup, but it's also growing globally. And as you think about the growth of the hobby and you think about soccer likely being a very large part of that growth in the years ahead, most people think of Messi and Mbappe and Yamal and players of that ilk. And we just saw a lot of them star, you know, in the, in the last few weeks. But people don't necessarily think about vintage, they don't necessarily think about soccer stars from decades ago. And there are actually a lot of really good quality investment soccer cars. I shouldn't say a lot. It's actually a very limited supply and from an investment standpoint Maybe that makes it a little more attractive. Yeah, I mean, no doubt. Like every sport, soccer has a long history. In fact, more than most sports, actually certainly more than basketball or American football. So soccer goes back to the 1800s in England and there are cards, really amazing cards that were issued then up until present day. A lot of the interesting things for me about soccer collecting is that it's so global because everyone, it's the number one sport in virtually every country. And so it's so global you end up with a lot of niche manufacturers all over the world. That makes it quite complicated. But it also, importantly for investment, restricts supply to narrow geographies and smaller print runs. And what you would see if you were a baseball collector in 1952, tops in an America that was much bigger than most of the countries where soccer cards, vintage soccer cards, were issued. So the dynamics from investing really favor it because your supply is always going to be limited. Of course, that doesn't mean that every vintage soccer card is rare. Right. There are varying degrees, but it certainly sets the groundwork for a compelling investment opportunity if that's what you're looking for, if you pick the right players. A couple other amazing things to me about soccer is that you can collect players like we traditionally do here in the US you can collect clubs, you can collect countries. So there's many different avenues for it. You can collect World cup tournaments, you can collect stickers, Panini stickers that have been around since, you know, the 1970s and their first album was in 1964. So there's many different ways to go about it. And the character of soccer collecting is so different from anything we see in America, with every country having different types of cards or stickers, different shapes, different sizes. Most of them do fit in standard PSA holders, which I know is a high preference for most, for most collectors. But in the end, it's just there's a little bit of archeology. There's not enough information out there, it's not codified to globally codify the. The, the soccer information would take a tremendous amount of effort. And so you need to kind of get into the local countries to start to understand what exists there. And sometimes there's books or collector groups on Facebook and you just kind of get in there, you become very familiar with Google Translate and you introduce yourself to people from all over the world. So it's also quite global. One of the great things about the World Cup, I don't know if you had a chance to go to some of the games, but Just the international environment, just the people. And that's another really special thing about soccer collecting in general and vintage soccer collecting in. In. In particular. Yeah. And it's. It's its own fascinating subculture, as you said, global subculture, within the sports card world. And we're gonna, you know, over the next 30 minutes here, we're gonna try to demystify it a little bit. You know, this is. Obviously, I said we're gonna teach the audience everything they need to know. The truth of the. The truth is this is kind of a 101 course, but we hope that people get deeper into it from here. You've brought some cards that we're going to share with the audience here in just a second and talk about these cards and how they, you know, tie into this. I'm curious, though, how did you get into vintage soccer collecting to. To get started? Yeah, I mean, it's not a natural thing, right. But I grew up collecting Star wars cards, baseball cards, ultimately migrated into Negro League collecting, and have, you know, have a number of items at the Baseball hall of Fame and, And. And things like that. And I started to really kind of get everything that I could want in one segment, which was my Negro League section. And a lot of those cards resonate from Latin America because sadly, not any cards were ever issued of Negro league baseball players in the US So I was in these Latin American countries doing deals, tracking down cards, and I started to notice, you know, more and more soccer cards. And having played soccer and been a follower since the 1986 World Cup, I started to wonder what was out there. And it really started with a big question mark. Who was out there? And of course, you know, the goat names Maradona and Pele. Right. But, you know, I figured there was probably stars from every country, and it turns out, yes, there is. And every country has their own Jackie Robinson story, right. To varying degrees of relevance. They have different class stories, they have club stories. And so when you start, somebody like myself who really enjoys history, you start to go down these rabbit holes and you just find interest in the. In the stories, which are, you know, what compel so many of us to collecting anyway, especially vintage, because, you know, none of us here saw Babe Ruth, but we all appreciate the aura of what he did. Right? And so you can kind of regain a little bit of that when you go back and study the history. And the world has documented much of this history. You've got stadiums named after former players. You've got statues all over the world. Right. So there's Tons of lists. There's not one International Soccer hall of Fame, but every country has a different hall of fame. So you start to go down all these rabbit holes and you find some really, really compelling, interesting stories. And. And if collecting continues to grow, as we've seen in the US abroad, and I'm sure you know about Lewis Hamilton opening stores all over the world. Right. Continue following your footprint and so many others that are. That are getting into this growing space. And you hear about PSA opening different offices around the world, you can clearly kind of see an interest and a leaning towards more international people coming into the hobby. And what are they going to be interested in? Sure, they'll be interested in TCG like they already are. Sure they'll be interested in F1, another global sport. Sure they'll be interested in soccer, right? Probably mostly soccer from a sporting perspective. And so I think that it's a really interesting space. We're just at the beginning kind of of it. It's rare. You see, I'll show you here in a second. The highest paid price ever paid for a vintage soccer card is probably less than an ohtani card. There's 50 of them that sells this week in golden type of thing. So it's just very, very nascent and the supply is super constrained. So I think that it's a really interesting space. I got into a love of soccer history, of collecting and just seeing stuff internationally, that. That piqued my interest. And the deeper you dig, the more interesting it becomes. And in a way, we're all kind of archaeologists in this space. Finding new cards, grading. I've graded thousands of new cards that PSA had never graded. So documenting the albums, where they come from, and working with them to build out the database of global availability in this space, that's what. Yeah, it's wild. And I love the combination of growing international demand with a lot of that focus being on soccer, combined with, you know, these are the vintage stars, these are the stars from yesteryear that, that typically what you see is like when somebody gets into collecting, a lot of focus is on the modern people, the people today, you know, let me get the next Jamal card. But then once they've been in collecting for a few years, they start to look back towards time. They look to start to, you know, look back towards history. We see that a lot like, you know, new collectors come in and they get really interested in modern baseball cards. But then, you know, they end up a few years into their collecting journey, they buy their first Willie Mays or they Buy their first Hank Heron or the first Babe Ruth and then they kind of get more into the vintage side of things. And so if you surmise that same pattern might happen internationally with new people getting into soccer collecting, they. They're fascinated by the modern, but eventually they start to pay attention to some of this stuff. And with how low the pop counts are on a lot of this stuff, with how small the total population is, it could set itself up for this being, you know, a future explosive growth area for the hobby. This isn't investing advice and obviously what you and I are saying today is simply speculative based upon kind of our own feelings of things that we think this could be be big. Nobody knows for sure what's going to happen, but it does seem like if you read the tea leaves of what's happening in the hobby and how fanatics and Topps are really trying to push internationally. And as you said, the new card shops that are opening up in Europe, if you see all that, then you kind of have to draw a line back to some of this stuff and, and just. And feel good about where all of this is going. Yeah. I mean, there's no guarantee. Right. And only a small percentage of people who collect modern collect vintage and even a smaller percentage collect soccer, would collect soccer vintage. But when you'll see the Pops on some of these things, which, by the way, the Pops are not to be trusted. Like a 1950s tops card. Right. Because if you have a. If you're in Brazil and you have a Pele, you know, rookie, it's very difficult for you to grade those cards. Right. There is no PSA. You ship it scarily through international post right to PSA and then you get it back. So I don't 100% always trust the Pops in this segment. Right. Other segments, I feel way more secure on those. Those will grow in time, but all you really need is demand to grow more. And the demand structure is really set up, to my eyes, to outgrow the supply, because I've been looking for nearly 20 years for items all over and have a good sense for what's rare. And like, the items that you'll see today are quite rare. And I'm very convinced of that. And I think the market, if you look at the growth over time, you'll see that it's just not that much, even though you see big marks in the market. And then you would expect everyone to rush. Everyone is rushing to go find these items, but they just don't exist because they're small. Regional albums made of very flimsy paper. Or they had different dynamics where you fill out a page of an album and you get a prize. So what happened? Most of those albums get destroyed. Right. And so there's a lot of dynamics that you have to love, the supply side and the demand side. There's also a lot of dynamics that you have to like the supply side. And when you marry those two, it can become compelling to think about some allocation to the space, if you like, you know, the players and the history. You know, I never tell people what to buy. I just say, hey, think about your constructs, what you're interested in, what you enjoy. And I think there's many different pockets in soccer because of the nature of club country positions. Right. There are people that collect just goalies. There are people who collect, you know, just Real Madrid. You know, there are people who, although they should collect Barca. So. No, but the reality is there's just. It's a super fun little sub segment that not a lot of people focus on. Look at, I collect Messi and Ronaldo and. And I've got a bunch of Hollands and Mbappes and. And. And I love those cards. But the vintage soccer cards, when you hold them, are just. They just hit different. Yeah, they got history associated with them. Yeah. Well, we're going to get into these, but before we do, the. The gentleman who connected us, Brett Oppenheim, people probably know him from the TV show selling Sunset. The. The only other time in the history of the sports card investor, kind of, you know, media channels that we've ever covered vintage soccer, was we did a video with him. Gosh, it's been three or four years now since we published that video that I believe we published on the Sports Card Investor YouTube. And he had gotten into it, you know, and he kind of got the bug. And. And he continues to have the bug. And he's. So. He's one of the people who plays in this space. Space, but it's not a big space. You mentioned the. There's kind of a discord that a lot of the vintage soccer collectors come into it. How many active people do you think are in that? Yeah, I mean, we. We have 1500 people that have signed up, but we only have a few hundred that are kind of active. So it's a very small collecting base and it's from all over the world, which makes it really fun, especially World cup times when different people's teams are doing well or not well. So, you know, it's a very, very fun place to learn because there's a lot to learn. This is a space that you just don't jump into without learning yet. Certainly there are more tools today than there ever were for me. I would buy stuff many times and not even know what it is. And there were no soccer cards slabbed when I first started collecting. Like, almost none. Right. So it's really changed, but it's still not easy. Right. And so, you know, a 1930 UK issue of Dixie Dean may sound really cool. And what you've heard today is like, oh, my God, that must be rare. Most of those are not rare. Right. So there are these nuances where, where you just. It takes learning and, and having a nice community, a global community that's very helpful and interested in sharing their. Their, you know, thoughts. And like most during COVID you know, found kind of a group of people to. To co. Mingle with that had a similar, somewhat bizarre interest in global soccer cards was great. And that community continues today even though it's small. So if you can, we can put a link down to that community if people are interested. Could you give the name of that? Yeah, it's just called the Vintage Soccer Discord. Vintage Soccer Discord. So they're pretty straightforward. And along the same lines, I post a lot of stuff on my YouTube channel and my Instagram, which is Elray Collection. L, the letter L? Yeah, like L Ray, like the Q, R, A Y, underscore collection. And I post cards there. Modern soccer cards. Vintage soccer cards. And I'm still at the size, not your size, where I respond to most inquiries and help guide people through their collecting journey. But there's a lot of people, like Brett continues to be involved. I think I sold him some of his first vintage soccer cards. And we continue to thrive as a community. And back, I think when Brett kind of got in, what, four years ago, five years ago, I can't remember, I think it was incredibly rare that we would have soccer cards selling for thousands of dollars. And yeah, the modern stuff. Now I'm sure you keep track. Some of like the Holland 101 that just sold like 600,000. Right. So you have the Messi 71 bis sold for 1.5 million. The Pele PSA 9 Alifa sold for close to 1 million a couple weeks ago. So obviously there are some big cards, but even a lot of these vintage guys that have low pops are selling for, you know, 10,000, 20,000, up to $70,000, which, you know, was nowhere to be seen even a few years ago. And I think that that doesn't mean when we'll walk through some of these that those don't have more Runway. Right. But it's already appreciated significantly, as has frankly most of the sports card hobby, right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's start to walk through some of them. The first stack you've got here. We're going to start with Pele because he's the name that's probably best known by everybody watching. And then we're going to get into maybe slightly lesser known names, but cards that can be very compelling from a vintage standpoint. Talk to me about these Pele cards that you have. Yeah, so first of all, Pele, I'd say that in general, most collectors, when they get in, they'll say, hey, who are the goats? Like, you know, everybody's like, hey, you know, MJ, LeBron, Maradona. And Pele is kind of has been the historical argument. Yes, we'll add ultimately Messi probably into that. And you know, maybe certain people will still advocate for CR7, but in general it's, you know, Pele is kind of the original goat, the original Lamina mal right now wearing his jersey today. So Spain goes to the final and he actually started with Santos as a 16 year old. And so he played prior to the World cup with Santos and after for many years. And so there are some cards that were issued prior to the World Cup. So two very in particular are these. Is this 1957Americana? And this is a very. Both of these are incredibly rare. So a lot of people are going to think 1958 is Pele's rookie year. And yeah, that's his rookie World cup. Right. He's 17 years old, he bursts on the scene, phenomenal player. But this particular one, this 57Americana, comes out before you can see he's in a Santos Jersey here, an SGC2 copy sold a couple years ago for $500,000 and it's currently a Pop3 at PSA with one SGC copy. So there's four copies total across all grades. Across all grades. Four copies that I know to exist that have ever been graded. Exactly. Oh, wow. And so I know of a couple in Brazil that are still in the albums. And by the way, the top grade on these, like a lot of these vintage stickers will be twos because they were in albums, so they're removed. So there's slight paper loss frequently on the back. Right. So but this is a pre World cup issue and probably one of his more important cards. Wow. There are other. This is another one also pre World cup. This is Oliveira and Benassi. And this is even rarer. It's a Pop 2, also labeled here as 1957 Pele in total and one SGC. Wow. So this one sold like, for a couple hundred thousand dollars six years ago. So it's incredibly rare. This one also has a crazy fact that it's the redemption sticker in the album. So you remember monopoly, like at McDonald's, right? You get these little pieces and you park down your. You always get Park Place, but you never get Boardwalk because you need to have all of them to get the prize. Same thing here. And his sticker was the prize sticker. Okay. So the fact that even if you. You got it, you most normally redeemed it. Redeemed it, sure. So there's only two of these graded. My gosh. By. By. By psa. And this is pre World cup material and sold for nearly $200,000 in 2020. You got one. You got one of the two here. This is the. I bought this six years ago for $200,000. Okay. Wow. Okay, so that's a huge. At the time, that must have been an unheard of sale. Yeah, it was. It was. Yeah. It was crazy for that grade. Like most people will look at that and say it's a 1.5, by the way, the highest graded of that. Right. At some point, you know, in most vintage soccer, I focus more on eye appeal than just. Than just the numerical grade because, you know, sometimes a 1, a 2, a 1.5, you know, this isn't a 9 to a 10. Right. These have some issues with them, but that's part of also what makes them, you know, fun to collect. Right. There's not this. Yes. We have. In certain cards that you'll see, we have. We have not organic rarity. You know, we have pop rarity in terms of condition rarity. But. But on a lot of this stuff, just getting any copy and any grade is a. Is an accomplishment. So Those are the 57s or the pre World Cup. There's actually a couple other stickers and kind of in this pre World cup category, some of them haven't even been graded by psa. But there are collectors in Brazil that have the albums. But then we transition to kind of the more seen. Like I'd say that pretty much every month plus, or you'll see at least one copy of the 1958 Alifa. Yeah, this one I'm familiar with. I've seen this one before. You see these pop up on, you know, Golden Heritage. Some of the different auction sites pretty Much every auction house has this. This is typically, I'd say if you ask most people what's the Pele rookie? I think that they would generally think about this. And there's lots of reasons for that, good reasons, I think. Number one, it's issued. He's in his World cup jersey, right. In Sweden where he makes his World cup debut. And he does extremely well. He's not the best player of the tournament. Some people think that he was. No, it was actually his teammate Dede, but he was a huge impact on the, on the. Scored a couple goals in the final. It's issued there. It's cardboard. So a lot of people stickers can be thinner. Right. And so it's actual true cardboard. The image is amazing. Right. So there's lots of things and I think very importantly for this, especially for crossover people looking to invest in Pele, is that it comes in high grade. So back to what I was just talking about a second ago, the low grade. Some collectors just don't feel super comfortable with low grade items. Right. And so the fact that you can have a condition rarity is something that attracts especially high end collectors. So this is where a PSA9 copy just sold a couple weeks ago for whatever close to a million dollars. And that had held the record as the highest soccer card. A couple years ago a PSA 9 also sold for 1.3 million. So my copy here is a 8.5 and the total pop is 220. And there are only six PSA 9s. There's another four PSA 8 and a half, five PSA 8s and everything else is significantly below that. So it's still. It brings those collectors that want to have a high grade item in their collect in their collection. It also brings liquidity. Right. So you can constantly see, you know, I'm sure your market movers is like moving every sale. You probably have seen 30 sales of these in the last month because people tend to sell a lot of these cards during the World cup because it renews interest in these types of players. Yeah. So Pele, I'd say standard one, most typically the entry level Pele rookie that I see. Or an Aquarella. Yeah, okay. Right. But that doesn't mean they're the only ones. And I did want to bring, since you wanted to talk a little bit about Pele here, some other alternatives that I think, like if I was an investor, I am, I consider myself mostly a collector, but of course nobody likes to. You want to do your homework and not overpay and you Want to understand that your bets have a more probable chance of paying off than not. Right. I think that's the way I look at it. I invest in my day job, so I don't really necessarily want to constantly be thinking about that in my collecting. But this one is an Americana, that 57Americana. This is the next year, 58, also World cup year. And it has just what I love about this is beautiful image. He's in the Brazilian uniform. It is a Brazilian sticker made in his home country. Right. It also is a very low pop relative to the Alifa. Right. So this pop now is a total pop of 21. And a few years ago, one of the higher graded copies, a 6.5, which is really high grade for a vintage sticker, sold for 65,000 or something. So it's a very. For me, it kind of threads the needle between rarity, eye appeal and being in his home country. That means something to me. That may not mean something for a Swedish collector. And this is where you get this nuances in vintage soccer or a European collector that may prefer other issues in either their home countries or the World cup country or those types of things. So that's one. And in general, I tended to talk about the constellation of rookies because some of the dating on some of the soccer cards changes through time as we get more information. Right. And so here's a beautiful card. One of my favorite cards, not definitely the most valuable, but it just looks like a piece of art. It's a Brazilian sticker from 1959. When I bought this one, we weren't sure if it was 58, 59, 57. As time goes on and you get copies of the albums and you can identify which players, which seasons they're for, because they don't put the year on a lot of these things for some reason, it becomes really interesting. So I kind of generally consider early Pele 1957, which are nearly impossible. So 58 to 60. There's a tremendous amount of amazing cards for Pele and something like this, which I love, is a pop seven. And there's a lot of these types of cards out there. But all of these cards, while the ones you've seen are valuable, there's tons of amazing Pele cards that are not. You're not going to break the bank if you want to get some representation. You can get 50s and 60s Pele cards that are absolutely gorgeous with great eye appeal for hundreds of dollars. So you don't have to. This is not just a rich man's game. Anybody who's entry level can get a really attractive player of Pele or Maradona. Virtually any soccer. Vintage soccer player. That kind of fills a hole in the collection. Yeah, these are beautiful cards. Really, really neat cards. A lot of uniqueness. A couple of these I've not never seen before. So that's interesting. Okay, so we talked a bit about Pele. He's the name people know the most. But let's go a little further back in time and let's go through some of the other vintage cards that maybe people aren't thinking as much about that you brought with you today. Yeah, sure. So, you know, first, this is kind of Pele before Pele. So this is Arthur Friedenreich. He's a Brazilian striker. He was also kind of two in one. He was an elite striker that won many different championships in Brazil. Supposedly scored a thousand goals. Right. So this is like same Pele territory. The documents aren't all there to prove that, but clearly. Absolutely. One of the goats. And he also came of African descent, so he also had some Jackie Robinson esque type stories that went along with his. And this actually card here that you're looking at is currently the record for the most, the highest paid price for a vintage soccer card. And so I bought this card for $70,000 at Golden A couple years ago. And it's exceedingly rare. It's a pop one and his nickname was El Tigre. And. And it has his nickname on the card, which I just love. And so. And it's just a beautiful. This may be one of the most beautiful cards. If you see the front and the back there's got this crazy like, you know, and that's part of the thing. It's like lithographic. It's got this crazy art. There's like a devil baby smoking. You've actually got to look at this thing. Was this, was this like a cigarette? Yes. So this was a cigarette card. This would be like American collectors would think of the T206. Exactly. Baseball cards. And this was. This was similar to that from 1922, a cigarette card. But obviously soccer based one that you said. This is from Brazil, was it? Yeah, yeah, distributed in Brazil. Yeah, distributed in Brazil. And that's a pop one. So that's the only pop in other grades. That's it. Oh, this is the only one that exists? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it's really. It truly is very unique. Like when we talk it's an organic one, you're saying pop one. Yeah, yeah, it's a pop One like no other grade. Yeah, total. All the pop numbers I'll give you are like, total wow. Unless I name a specific grade. Yeah. So it's literally a pop one. Now there is a $1925 from a couple of years later and that has a pop seven. And that is issued from when the Brazilian team played in Argentina in 1925 and they made a card of him. And there's seven copies at PSA of that card. As an alternative one hasn't sold in a number of years, but I would expect that if one hit the market, it would bring north of 10,000. Today the last sale was probably 2 or 3,000. So there's definitely been some appreciation in the space. And people, as they go back, they start to learn some of these names are like, okay, who was, you know, MJ before mj, Right. And then you go back and say, well, maybe it's Magic or Bird, right? Or you go. And then you go back and say, hey, you know, you just keep going back. And we've had some people trickle back into the hobby asking about those. In fact, the other striker that follows him, Leonardas, which I did not bring a card of his today, just set a record for his cards on. I keep calling it PWCC Fanatics Collection for like $50,000. So another kind of obscure name that he won the Golden Boot in the World cup in 1938 for Brazil, and he just set a record for his cards as well. So a little bit of movement in the space, but on the very, very low pop stuff. We've noticed a big dramatic change recently. Yeah. Wow, that's wild. Very interesting. And then so since we're talking about the World Cup, Haaland, everyone loves Holland. I saw his social. His social media doubled almost. He really endeared himself to the world. And Holland is chasing, you know, in his performances in the Premier League, has been chasing Dixie Dean's record. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. The Premier League record where Dixie Dean scored 60 goals, kind of the Babe Ruth record of the Premier League in a season. And Holland's been chasing that hasn't gotten there yet. There's a lot of excitement of if he could. If he could beat it. And Dixie Dean, who holds that record in is. Has a rookie from 1925. And you know, particularly this is a pop 30. So this card does sell and it comes in the top grade would be a PSA 5. Okay. Right. You got a PSA 4 here. Yeah, so a PSA 4. You know, he's in Everton. Great. He scored more than 400 goals in his career. About a goal a game which you know, is for soccer is like the standard for elite level striker, you know. And he was an inaugural inductee to the English Football hall of Fame. So this is a really great, you know, traditional what I'd say it's the same size as like a T206. It's photographic so it just looks, you know, quite amazing. And there's. It's a pop of 29. Yeah. Very neat. Very neat. Right, yeah. Another one kind of moving on chronologically here we have Giuseppe Miesa, who is a two time World cup winner, probably largely considered by experts the best Italian player ever. One of the few cases where the, the I'd say the experts pick a vintage player to be the best player from a particular country. So he was an absolute prolific goal scorer. Again one two World Cups which was pretty rare. This is a very early card for his. This has actually been, you know, sold a number of times on most of the major platforms. Golden and Fanatics collect. It's a pop 11. The last sale this year was $30,000 for a PSA1. The stadium for Inter Milan is named after him. So he's a really, really, really big deal and probably he was known as El Genio, like the genius on the field. So he's really a, a very, very collectible Italian player. Probably the most collectible pre war player. And you see he has chocolate cards though you can get from the 1930s from Italy that are a couple hundred dollars. So again back to this point, you don't have to go over the most preferred, rarest, earliest card. There are lots of ways to kind of get in the space and get part of the nostalgia that comes with, you know, if you're going to. A lot of people are collecting Golden Boot winners from the different World Cups or specific, specific cards from, from a country. Yeah, really, really neat. Yeah, super cool. So, so probably another one to that is in that category of the best player from a country is Matthias Sindalar. That name ring a bell? It does, I've heard that, yeah. Ok, so and he's this, he's. This crosses soccer. Right? So he was absolutely one of the best players ever for. And he's still, I think considered, largely considered the best player for Austria. He has this German issue of his that came from the late 1920s. This is generally considered his rookie card. It has a current pop of PSA of 12. And you know there's only. This is the highest graded at a PSA 5. And, you know, he was known as the Mozart of soccer. But what he's probably most known for, besides the fact that he was absolutely amazing and did everything on the field, scored goals, was a field captain. Was that when Germany annexed Austria Prior to the 1938 World Cup, Austria was considered the favorite to win that World cup because he was on the wonder team with a bunch of other players and they hadn't lost a game in years. Germany annexed them and he refused to play for Germany. And then nine months later, he was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning. So there's a movie made about his life. So not only was he an amazing story, in the farewell game between Germany and Austria before they dissolved the Austrian team, he went and he and another teammate scored goals at the end and went and, you know, celebrated in an excessive manager in front of the Nazis. And nine months later he's dead. So there's a lot of questions obviously that come from that. But still, even despite the fact that his career was truncated, he is absolutely one of the most iconic Austrian players ever and just one of the most iconic pre war players in general. And he has some amazing Bulgarian sport cards which are relatively common. There's a Babe Ruth in that set and you can get those for $100, which to me blows my mind. Such an, you know, the pop. Yes. Is multiple hundreds. But it is an amazing artifact for someone that really should be remembered. And I believe that it someday will the US will make a movie, a Hollywood type movie on this because it is really a dramatic story when you delve into it. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's wild. Absolutely. Nice looking card too, right? Cool. Isn't that cool? Yeah, very cool. So another real fun one is this Jose Andrade. I'm going to try to speed it up here. I'm really passionate about this. Jeff. Don't people on this, but he was a member of the 1924, 28 Olympic teams prior to the World cup, when the Olympics was the global competition. And Then also the 1930 Uruguayan World cup where Uruguay won. And he was one of the main players, him and Jose Nassasi. And it makes it so he was absolutely dominant midfielder, controlling the game, just a fantastic player. And Nassasi was the defender and his cards. He's also of African descent, as you can see. So there are a lot of the same issues that we talked about with Friedenreich or Jackie Robinson or these types of things he encountered in all of these of these of his tournaments around the world. And this particular card is a pop three. He has other cards earlier and later than this, but I just thought this one's incredibly attractive. And this one in particular has one at Fanatics right now on Fanatics Premiere that last night I checked, it's at $24,000 for this card and it's a pop three. That particular one I think is higher grade, but nonetheless, Andrade is a Uruguayan. Great. So now I think you may be feeling, you know, we've talked about Austrians, we've talked about, you know, Uruguayans, Brazilians. Right. It truly is an international endeavor and most of these cards have been issued in different countries, if you've been following along. Right. So now I'm going to jump back to Europe and talk about Dr. Serosi, who is another really important player. And. And he is kind of of the same ilk as Mesa and Sindelar in terms of, you know, his important. He's Probably a top 5 to 10 pre war player for sure. He also scored nearly a goal a game. This is currently a pop 4. So another pre war, you know. Great. And the last sale on this that I could find was just a PSA4 sold actually last month for $10,000. So, you know, these kind of names that most people would not have heard of, you know, are garnering some attention because of their importance. Of course, when you're talking a pop four. Yeah. I mean, the market, the market cap is like completely negligible, Right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the pops, you're saying on some of these cards. I mean, people need to understand we're talking the entire population of the cards, not just in a particular grade. So four of those cards having ever been graded by psa. Yeah. The numbers on these are so wildly low. Right. And so. But that's why I say I brought some exceedingly rare, you know, valuable ones to show you what the potential is. Right. Obviously, these aren't going to be for every collector, but there are other cards that are very accessible, that have much higher pops. Right. And you can get into a Cindalar for a couple hundred bucks. You can get into a Koenig Sarosi for a couple hundred bucks. You can buy our next guy, Alfredo distefano, for a couple hundred bucks. There's lots of cards of them. So it doesn't have to be this exceedingly rare copy that came from Argentina, which right now is a total pop five from his home country. Destefano goes on and becomes Real Madrid great. Five times Champions League. He's the only player to get The Super Ballon d'. Or. I'm sure you've heard of the Ballon d', or, right? Kind of the MVP for soccer players issued by France Football. Well, every 30 years they issue a super Ballon d' or for the best player of the three decades before, which I think should be coming up here at the end of around 19, 20, 30, and most people think that will be Messi. So before Messi, the other winner, single winner of that was Alfredo Di Stefano, who was a star in Argentina, in Colombia and then also in Real Madrid, where he was the absolute force behind five, what we call today Champions League victories. And you know, he had 400 goals in 500 games. But he also played midfield kind of like Messi. He wasn't just about scoring goals, also about creating goals. So just crazy. Crazy guy. Won multiple Ballon d', ors, was runner up multiple times as well. Wow. Very neat. Yeah. And so, and that one's issued in Argentina. So again, I took the flavor of different places, right? This one's issued in Italy, but of a Hungarian great who played alongside Alfredo distefano. This is Frederick Puskas. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he made kind of waves a couple years ago when his PSA 9 of this particular card sold for more than 300,000. Which is, which is the, which is the non pele kind of vintage record at the time, if you define vintage from, you know, prior to Maradona. So all depends on your cutoffs. Right? But it's a big number for not what is considered a household name. Now if you watch FIFA, you follow their award, awards and whatnot, you know, they name every year the Puskas award and that's on the most beautiful goal scored and that's named after him. And he is a, he is a, you know, just a crazy. He scored more than 750 goals for club and country. He was absolute, you know, dominant. He, the Hungary won the 1952 gold medal on the Olympics again when the Olympics was like a World cup, right. And then they lost in the final in 1954 to Germany. So he also played alongside of Distefano for three years and so won various Champions League. Was a, was a successful coach as well. And this is his only rookie card and it predates any of his stuff by a long margin. And it's a pop 20 PSA in total with 1-911-8.5. Because these were hand cut. So you're going to get a little bit better grades because they could be cut, and if they hadn't been cut, they could be cut today and still be graded by psa. Interesting. So, yeah, it's a. But it can be quite a valuable card. And, you know, in total, you know, it's just one of the most iconic, what I'd call cards that we have in vintage soccer. Wild. Very cool. So have you heard of Franz Beckenbauer? Yes. Okay. So he's one of the few guys who won the World cup and then. And then he also coached the team to the World cup and he kind of created the position of sweeper, or he's credited with that, you know, kind of really changing the game. And he was just a. Yeah, he's. He would score goals, but he would play in the midfield in the back. Very versatile player. Widely considered a top five, in the worst case, top 10 player of all time. Now that we have like Messi and Ronaldo to deal with. Right. And so this is an exceedingly rare rookie from his home country in Germany. You'll see Bergman's on 1965 Bergman's cards. You'll see TTTS that also come from Germany. But this particular one is fun because it's issued out of coffee. A coffee like, you'll see. And this is one of the things about the global hobby. Things are issued with dish soap, and this particular one's issued with coffee. It's one of my favorite cards. Exceedingly rare. It comes in two different versions. A large version, this is a large and a small version, and there's three large and three small in the PSA pop. So six total. But you can still go out and get a Bergman for $100. You don't have to get this. But these types of really, really low pop, elite cards do exist out there and make it really fun. I mean, obviously he probably doesn't need much of an introduction, a psa. One of these cards, though, sold with a kind of messed up back last year for about 12k. So there is some recognition in the hobby of the ones that happen to be rarer. And even in poor condition, these things sell well because just like a Wagner, you know, you want a copy of a Wagner, right? No matter what the grade. When you find the. When you find these rare items. Yeah, yeah, very cool. And it's hard to talk about. About Beckenbauer without talking about Johan Cruyff. And he. Beckenbauer beat him in the final of the 1974 World Cup. And he's Ajax, you know, superstar. He was credited with, you Know, Clockwork Orange, you know, total football. The really Dutch, beautiful way he ultimately coached Barcelona, a team he played for. And Pep Guardiola was one of his disciples. So he still has a huge impact on the game. Not only was he a multiple Ballon d' or winner, but he. He really changed the game both from a coaching and a player perspective. Have you. Does the Cruyff turn ring a bell with you? It's a specific move. Go check it out on YouTube. I'm sure my son does. So, yeah, so they practice this. Like he came up with moves that, you know, were just elite different. They basically break the knees of your defender type moves. Right. So he is just an icon really. And he came in, remember that super Ballon d' or that I mentioned earlier for the best player of the 30 years, he came in second place in that voting. So after Di Stefano came Cruyff and then I think third was Platini. So he is just an iconic guy. He has earlier stickers, but this is his first card and it's a beautiful card, 1970s vibes because it comes out in 1970. Just love the way this card looks. And the card has a pop of 52. His other, the Palorex, which is earlier very, that sells for more money, that has a pop of 100. His Vanderhout, which is another rookie option, has 320. And the sicker Verlag has more than 100. So in general, you can find a Cruyff rookie for hundreds of dollars. Right. So to me, when I think about this, I'm like, okay, wait a second. One of the best players, number two in the Super Ballon d' or, and I can get a rookie card of his total pop of all the rookies, 500. Like how many parallels in today's stuff? Yeah, sure. You know, so when I kind of calibrate and I'm like, change the game, long lasting history, iconic player for a couple hundred dollars. Like even if you're not gonna make a 3x on that, and maybe you will, just the joy of collecting these players and tracking some of these things down makes it not great just for the people seeking rarities and appreciation for these super rare cards, but also great for entry level collectors that want to learn more about the wonderful sport, which we all love. Super cool. And then the last one that I brought for you, and we could be here for hours, Jeff. So it's just there's so much when you talk about the global nature of the game, but of course, Maradona. Yeah, you know, so Many. You gotta have it, right? And this is his only 1977 issue. And I know a lot of American collectors kind of like, wow, that's kind of a weird shape, right? And at the beginning, I'll tell you, I didn't like stickers and I didn't. Why? Because I grew up on tops cards. Sure, right. So I'm like. But when you start to see how these things were issued, learn about these different cultures and see that pogs, this circular shape has been going on like you saw in the di Stefano from 1947, you'll see that back to the 1930s. That's just the way that they collected there. They have all these different shapes. And then you start to understand that, wow, these countries do things in a way. And that's part of embracing the global nature of the sport and the collecting. And then I love, like, I actually prefer pogs from Argentina now that I've seen so many albums, whereas in the us Give me a card. You start to get a lot of this familiarity as you go through the vintage. But there is an adjustment period, I'll tell you, for most collectors, but this is only 1977 issue. And he's in the Boca Juniors. And it's not necessarily the prettiest thing to look at, but it is a very, very cool, very first Maradona item. Total pop is 107. Right now, there's two PSA 8s, there's six PSA sevens. This is one of the sevens. Maradona, of course, player of the century by, you know, FIFA tied with Pele, so he's just as top as it gets. You know, we'll see how Messi does tomorrow. But, you know, if he gets and wins a second World cup, maybe he'll. He'll eclipse him. I think in most minds of most Argentines, he's still behind Maradona. I mean, the way Maradona carried Napoli to the City A wins, the way he carried the 86 Argentina team is just hasn't really been seen. It's super hard for one player to carry a soccer team, Right. It's hard in basketball, right. To see you can't just have one superstar. Sure, yeah. But when you don't win, right? And then. But here in soccer, when there's 11 players, you just can't. It's so rare. And I think that's part of the thing. If you look at his numbers, you know, you say, why are people so excited about Maradona? Well, they clearly didn't see him. I was lucky enough to see him. Right. But it also is just how he took objectively poor teams and took. Made them absolutely fantastic to win to the point of winning the World cup, to getting to the Finals. It really is amazing, right? And not that I would ever hold up Maradona as a example of how you should live your life from some of the other choices he made, but on the football field, he was absolutely. You cannot argue with his accomplishments. And this is his only rookie. There's also other great rookies like they thought or, you know, year after 1978, 79. His first panini sticker is quite popular today. Personally, I like the 78 crack as an alternative. There are many. There are a few hundred of those he's pictured in Argentina jersey because he's one of the few, the last cuts to that team. So he made that album and so he ultimately wasn't on the 78 team. And the 78 Argentina team did win the World Cup. So his narrative could have been, you know, he could have won in 78 if he wasn't the last person to win. They lost in 82, one in 86 and nearly one in 90. So he could have been the next Pele. He wasn't, but he could have been. Right? And that's kind of why I think Pele still stands. Stands taller than everyone else. Three World Cups is insane. And, you know, I think a lot of people are thinking, hey, Mbappe is going to get there. Well, it's hard, right? As they just lost today. It's hard. And. And you know, he'll have a couple more chances, but it's extremely difficult to stay at the level, to make the teams play at World cup level. And so I think that to bring this full circle, Pele will always be one of the goats of the game. And I just don't see that changing anytime. But there are so many names in vintage soccer, depending on your countries, depending on your club preferences. It's just a great space and we'd love to invite people to the Vintage Soccer Discord. If you follow me on El Rey Collection, I can provide information. I'm happy I respond to my DMs and whatnot as people get into it. And I just think it's a lovely space that not only has space for investors, but also collectors. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. And I can only imagine that you're following at El Rey Collection. And also the Discord is going to get more active here as the years go on and the collecting market continues to grow globally. So it's going to be it's going to be fascinating to watch this space and especially with some of these pop counts. You've said today. I have a feeling that you know that heat around some of these cards when they do show up at auction because some of these hardly ever do. So when they do show up, I imagine there's, there's going to be a lot of demand for the very little supply that's there. Yeah. Very, very cool. So when are you get. What are you getting into? I don't know. I gotta figure out what I, I think I gotta start, you know, with, with, with maybe Maradona or Pele. I got to start with the big names first. But you know, before I get down to, to some more of the lesser known guys even though they're all time greats. But, but yeah, it maybe all we got the national coming up here. Maybe all all they've got the SOCO Expo event at the national where there's going to be a lot of soccer. I'll have a table there. Well, there you go. I'll see you there. And maybe, maybe I'll hunt around for a vintage soccer card or two while I'm there this year. Perfect. Well, we would love to have you and anyone as part of your community too. You're doing great things for the. And thanks for the time to discuss vintage soccer. Yes. Well, thank you for coming on the show, Al. We appreciate it. Thank you for being here and thank you for everybody out there watching. Just a reminder, these full length episodes of the Jeff Wilson show are available not just on YouTube under the Jeff Wilson show but also on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. So make sure you are subscribed everywhere. Thanks for watching. We'll see you soon with our next one. Take care.