World Record Prices for Soccer Cards!

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by aljurgela

You know I love you man, but to compare Sweden to Brazil in terms of size is CRAZY. I think that there are a TON of albums in Brazil, but people do not know what they have. There were 75 million people in Brazil in 1960 (now there are more than 200 million). There were 7 million people in Sweden in 1960 and only 9 million today.

My hypothesis is that many were tossed, but many Brazilian cards are stuck in boxes of "stuff" and when people realize some of the value of these things, they may actually make there way out. In Brazilian, football is not a religion... it is MORE important than religion! So there have to be a ton of cards and albums out there. It is just a matter of sheer numbers. I collect many Latin issues (Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican, etc.) and the number of Brazilian cards as of now are way lower than one would reasonably expect in relation to the others.

Here is some numbers of Pele ROOKIES to consider (current PSA number of cards graded):

VAV (Italy) - 7 - This, for me is one of the rarest of Pele rookies
Heinerle (Germany) - 62
Quigol (Brazil) - 29
Rekord (Sweden) - 70
ALFA (Sweden) - 33
Titulares (Brazil) - 23 (including cards #50 and #86)

OK, we would expect a lot of cards from Sweden as the World Cup was held there that year, but given the fact that Brazil is 10X the size, loves/eats/sleeps/dreams in football, it stands to reason that there are MANY more cards out there. I do believe, however, that they are much less common than the equivalent USA baseball issues (because they are roughly half the size in population and the standard of living was lower).

Anyway, these are my thoughts for the day.

The thing that strikes me about your post, Al, besides the good analysis, is that all of the countries listed except Brazil were stable, Western, first-world democracies at the time of issue of these cards and have basically remained that way since. Brazil was a developing country with substantial political instability over the decades. Big populace but poor. Perhaps that difference has something to do with it.