A couple of weeks ago, we had a special item in our auctions: a signed Panini sticker album by football legend Pelé himself. The sticker album contains 271 photos of all the participating football teams of the world championship of 1970 in Mexico. The album was even signed twice by Pelé. The winning bid not only came from Italy but also from someone who is nine years old (with some help from his father of course)! We spoke with the nine years old Lorenzo about his special win.
Only nine years old but Lorenzo has already built up quite a collection. He even has his own room for only his trading card books. The room is filled with all albums with thousands of stickers in it. We asked Lorenzo, "How many stickers have you put together over the years?". Lorenzo enthusiastically answered with, "More than 20,000 stickers!". This could be a record of the biggest trading card collection, collected by someone so young, in the whole of Italy.
His newest asset, with a little help from his father, is the complete Panini football album of the world championship of 1970 in Mexico. Signed twice by football legend Pelé himself. Italy lost in the finals to Brazil. The match ended at 4-1 to Brazil. Mister Pelé scored one goal that day.
We asked, "How did you play the auction to win your prize?". Lorenzo answered, "with all my fighting spirit!". "And what did you do when you knew you had won?", Lorenzo enthusiastically answered, "I screamed and screamed!’’. Lorenzo wanted to get this album so badly. "The album was signed by Pelé and we didn’t have one album with his autograph on it. This album is a real one of a kind", says Lorenzo.
His father, Maurizio, really believes in his son’s passion, so he really wanted to invest the money into it, which is why it is so great that he found the Panini album on Catawiki online. "You can look for the album in cities and in small towns at flea markets, but I don’t take those markets that seriously", says his son Lorenzo. Lorenzo ended the interview by saying that the album is even more special that it is signed by the best football player in the world!
Pelé’s signed Panini album has already been sold, but Catawiki has a lot of new trading cards every week. If you are interested in adding to your collection, take a look at our weekly trading cards auction.