The hobby of card collecting is cumilative. That is - as more people are involved, more knowledge is passed from the center to the outer circle. A subjective look at recent sales of soccer cards and world wide soccer issues, reveal the massive increase in interest.
For example, the PSA Registry (Professional Grading Service) has a Master listing of popular player cards - from Mickey Mantle Master Lists to Peyton Manning Master Lists to Wayne Gretzky Master Lists.
In my curiosity I peaked to see what they had listed under soccer. Well, well - someone actually had a PELE' Master List ! But wait ... there were only 20 to 25 cards listed ?
We ARE talking about PELE' - the undisputed KING of Soccer ... Football, Futebol, Veotbal, Calcio, Futbol ... everywhere in the world. So how can there only be a couple of dozen cards from a player that appeared on every continent, played in 4 World Cups and had a career over 2 decades ???
My own personal Master List of PELE' cards is over 200 cards - not including sets specifically dedicated to the world's most famous athlete. PSA's list also included a rash of mislabled cards.
The other well know card grading company - SGC (Sportcard Guarantee) - has dabbled into soccer card identification, but still have allowed a few errors to hit the market with their labels.
I have begun to compile a Master List for 3 of the most popular soccer players. I hope to have these available on CD ROM before summer.
Meanwhile, I hope PSA gets to know their goalpost from their helmet.
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