Pele is still making the news – or at least his picture is

There is a huge market for football memorabilia and it’s been there for a very long time. Old match tickets, rare football shirts, flags, signed match balls, trading cards, photos… all those items are sought by sports fans and dedicated collectors who either keep the cherished items or attempt to make a profit by reselling them.

One such sale made the news around the world as Pele’s 1958 trading card changed hands for an eye-watering sum of $340,100. The sale was announced by journalist Darren Rovell, who specializes in the sports memorabilia market.

To people outside the sports memorabilia trading world it may seem crazy to pay such sum for a piece of cardboard, but the price paid for Pele’s card is dwarfed by some of the previous sales that border on the incredible.

Trading card sales have been popular since a rare baseball player Honus Wagner’s card became the first to sell for $1 million in 2000. While that card has become the face of expensive sports cards, it’s actually not the biggest sale of all time.

That honour belongs to a 1952 card of Mickey Mantle, which holds two spots among the top-10 sales of all time. It was first sold for $2.8 million in April of 2018. It then became the largest known sale of all time in January of 2021 when Rob Gough purchased it for $5.2 million.

It's an intriguing business that is not necessarily related to the sportsmen on-field exploits but rather to the rarity of the cards in question. Still, it’s a nice way to remember the men whose portraits turned ordinary pieces of cardboard into something that’s cherished so much.