Nathan News

BUENOS AIRES – As prices continued to rise, Argentina’s trade department decided something had to be done.

Shopkeepers feared shortages. A key supplier struggled to meet demand. Desperate customers stood in long lines. For example, two weeks ago, Matías Tombolini, the country’s trade minister, and a group of other government officials gathered interested parties around a large conference table in a downtown office building for what appeared to be a solemn discussion to “seek possible solutions.”

Argentina was in a crisis: they didn’t have enough World Cup stickers for everyone.

Every four years, football fans around the world fall in love with the World Cup and the collectible palm-sized stickers known locally as figuritas.

This year, however, the popular pastime of filling the Panini World Cup album trademark has exploded in Argentina like never before. A confluence of supply and demand problems – but also a domestic inflationary crisis and a surge of expectations that Argentina’s team could be battling for the trophy later this year – has seen World Cup figuritas more coveted than ever and extremely hard to find .

Mom-and-pop stores, which typically sold the stickers, saw their supply plummet this year, leading parents and their children to scramble for sticker retailers as resale prices skyrocketed. Stickers are now routinely sold for at least double the suggested retail price of 150 pesos ($1) a pack, and counterfeits have infiltrated the market.

Things got so bad that even the national government, battling sky-high inflation and an increasingly disaffected society, found time to step in – only to back down when its efforts were derided as a waste of government resources.

Tombolini, the trade minister, did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and his meeting did not resolve the issue.

On a recent Tuesday in the Villa Urquiza neighborhood of Buenos Aires, shoppers included teenagers on bicycles, grandmothers scavenging on behalf of their grandchildren, fathers with their sons and a mother with a talkative dachshund. A curly-haired boy walked into a corner shop with the question that seemed to be on everyone’s lips these days.

“Do you have figuritas?” he asked breathlessly.

“Yes,” replied shopkeeper Ernesto Acuña. “Five packs for 900 pesos. But you have to queue up.”

Acuña said he traced his reaction to the frenzy back to a science. On the days when he can get a hold of packets of figuritas, he puts them up for sale at 6 p.m. sharp. But before handing over the first pack, he surveys the line that makes up the block and rations the amount for each customer to take home. On some days the limit is only two packs per person. Then Acuña stands by the window while figurita fanatics, money in hand and wide-eyed, trickle in on a prize that’s agonizingly and frustratingly unattainable in many places in Argentina this year.

“The World Cup is a cultural thing. It’s going crazy for everyone,” said Marcela Trotti, who accompanied her 11-year-old son Franco to buy figurines for his friends and a cousin.

The increased demand could be related to expectations – the Argentines are optimistic about their chances in Qatar after last year’s Copa America win – and this year’s tournament will be the last World Cup with the star Lionel Messi on the list.

And in a harsh economic climate where annual inflation is expected to hit 100 percent, the escapism of football glory has been a welcome distraction.

This has spawned an incandescent economy where the black market value of figure packs has skyrocketed. A single Messi card was recently sold for 3,000 pesos ($20) at a Figurita exchange market in Buenos Aires. A popular Argentinian online marketplace has listed a special Messi “Gold Legend” card for 60,000 pesos ($403) – a price that is almost the monthly salary of a minimum-wage worker. (The figuritas craze has even reached Messi’s household; the player confirmed after a recent game in the United States that his children are collectors too.)

“Argentina responds to passions,” said Acuña, a vice president of the union that represents kiosk owners. The group held a protest outside Panini’s Buenos Aires-area office last month, demanding more inventory.

Many have attributed the kiosk shortage to the fact that the product is now available in major grocery chains, gas stations, delivery apps and other outlets, but Panini Argentina claimed kiosks never had exclusive rights. The company sells to a number of retailers, who in turn sell to smaller retailers that have traditionally supplied the kiosks, Acuña said.

But this year, kiosk owners said they’re struggling to get supplies or have had to pay higher prices for what’s available. To get his point across, Acuña scrolled through a series of WhatsApp groups he had with other kiosk owners who responded with angry emojis to offers from vendors selling figuritas for more than 200 pesos ($1.34) a pack.

Panini Argentina, the local subsidiary of the Italian company that first sold World Cup stickers in 1970, said there was no shortage. “There is a much higher demand,” the company said in a statement. In response, it has ramped up production, though Acuña said it didn’t really make a dent.

“Every week that goes by, a pack of Figuritas costs more in kiosks, on the street, on the internet,” he said.

Jorge Vargas, the owner of a figurita shop in central Buenos Aires, said it’s not that you can’t find figuritas. “It’s like, for 150 pesos, they’re hard to find,” he said.

Vargas was able to secure a good price from a reliable dealer that allowed him to stick to the proposed price, but he said other dealers chose to sell direct to the consumer, often at an inflated price online.

His own customers buy in bulk, he said, and then turn around and sell them in parks at a premium. Some customers got aggressive one day when he ran out of figuritas, so now he has the police come over to keep an eye on things.

For collectors, a completed sticker album is seen as an investment that could appreciate in value, much like Argentina’s last winning World Cup race led by Diego Maradona in Mexico 1986. But more than money, collecting figuritas is about memory, fans and kiosk owners said. “It’s a keepsake,” Vargas said, “so they can look back and say I was there during that time.”

Figuritas are immersed in nostalgia. At Parque Rivadavia in Buenos Aires, a hub for the sticker trade, there were more adults than children last Sunday. Huddled in groups, they pored over printed lists that made it easier to pinpoint the missing stickers.

Collectors called out country names and jersey numbers. “Uruguay 18th Portugal 11th Switzerland 2nd Serbia 8th Do you have these to swap?” asked a young man Agustín Corredoira, shaking his head. 18-year-old Corredoira was there with his mother Maria Laura and sister Carolina; They said they walked to a kiosk for more than two hours to buy 20 packs.

Matías Mannara, 19, found his figuritas in a kiosk near his night school. He paid 300 pesos ($2) per pack. “It hurt,” he admitted.

Nearby, Diego radio railed against the “mafia” for driving up the price of figuritas. But it was a happy World Cup season for him. Four Messi stickers appeared in packs that he and his 8-year-old son bought. One is in her album. Another was exchanged for a sticker featuring Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo. The other two were stored away for safekeeping.

“He doesn’t want to let him go,” Radio said, smiling at his son.