NEW YORK – It is possible, though unlikely, that I, a woman of 5ft 1in with a strong London accent, could ever be mistaken for an undercover member of the NYPD.
On the hottest day of summer in the city, on the corner of Rockefeller Plaza, I cannot help but notice I am being eyed surreptitiously. I am loitering around the spot where they normally put the big Christmas tree; for now, it has been transformed into a World Cup fan village.
All around me, deals are being done, through slights of hand and hushed, focused whispers. “Excuse me,” I approach the man who appeared to be regarding me with such caution. The eyes are averted again – in a flash, he is gone.
I have stumbled upon a secret trade. Of packs and cards, and complex filing systems of pen and paper. These are the Panini football sticker fanatics – they are filling up their annuals one player at a time and they are, I quickly appreciate, the most wholesome people you are likely to meet all summer.
“This is something we grew up doing every World Cup, trading at school,” says Clara, from Brazil. She started in 2002. “Here we are 20 years later – I’m ‘doing it for my son’” she says, miming inverted commas and a pantomime wink.
She is sitting opposite John, who has been compiling Panini sticker books since Mexico ’86. I ask if he got Diego Maradona that year. “Yes,” he says, and realises my accent. “Sorry about that.”
Passers-by are stopping to observe the molecular spreadsheets they are compiling to check which stickers they still need to complete their book.
“I don’t know if you saw this lady was here with her husband, they were gobsmacked,” John adds. “You’re trading what, like drugs?! It’s like, absurd. I started the day missing 200, so probably now I’m missing maybe 150.”
There is a serious point here, in that the Panini people are desperate to engage with the World Cup. The stickers are not cheap – Clara estimates she has spent just under $300 trying to complete her book – but it is more accessible than trying to watch a game.
On the day we are speaking, Norway are playing Brazil in the last 16. Resale tickets cost thousands.
“They raise the prices for everything for the World Cup, transport, planes, transport to the stadiums,” says Kyle, from Argentina. “Right now it’s £100, £150, it used to be like 20 bucks. Make money some other way – they are robbing us with the tickets.”
Strewn across the pavements are hundreds of sticker backs. Across the street, the face of Iraq and Luton Town forward Ali Al-Hamadi is plastered onto the marble wall.
A group of collectors in Mexico shirts have come across the river from New Jersey. They have “different books, from Canada, Mexico – we wanted the Mexican team first”. And they are inspired by the same reason. “I grew up watching Barcelona, but started leaning more to West Ham – but money doesn’t let me go to the games.”
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A fan from Tenerife wants all the stickers of two squads – Spain, and England. “But I don’t care about selling – I just trade. I went to watch [live] Norway against Senegal, and then I saw Croatia and Ghana in Philadelphia. I don’t really care about how much they cost.”
From the street corner, somebody approaches in search of a purple border. “No, no,” they are quickly told. “That’s too exotic.”
“Some [borders of the stickers] are blue, orange, green, and red ones too,” Carla explains. “Those are very, very rare – people are selling them for like $30. That guy was asking for purples, but I’ve never seen them.
“It depends where you buy the cards – some people give them out free, some people give out for $10, 15, 2, 3.”
One man is selling the hardest-to-come-by stickers for up to $600. A Guatemalan family in Manchester United shirts are so close to completing their book that “it is starting to get hard to get the stickers – I only have less than 100 to go”.
Clara says: “I’ve made the calculation. For stickers only, to complete the book, you would need $284. Now, I went to Costco and I got the special box and the hardcover book that was $79.99 – but you get some sticker packs, so it maybe goes down to $5 or so – so you would be spending $290.”
An expensive hobby in a World Cup of insatiable cost – “but here’s the thing,” she explains. “Sometimes people are so nice. If you have a little extra, he has 20 that I need, I have 15 he needs, he’s like ‘take the five’. You end up making friends.”
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