World Cup Stickers Sweep Soccer-Agnostic Venezuela
Venezuela is again sitting out the World Cup, but many people in this
soccer-agnostic nation have been swept up in the race to complete their
World Cup sticker albums.
Adults and children alike spill into plazas to swap and buy business
card-sized stickers with the faces of players, images of Brazilian
stadiums and glimmering renditions of each country's logo.
While soccer has long taken a backseat to baseball and even basketball
in Venezuela, the ritual of collecting World Cup stickers has sparked a
frenzy. Politicians, TV personalities and professional collectors can be
found at ad-hoc trading centers searching for the 640 stickers that
constitute a complete 2014 collection.
Aficionados buy slim, shiny packs of five stickers each, and then start
swapping, sometimes hanging out for hours until they find the right
soccer star smiling up at them. Traders say the hobby provides a
connection to the tournament and is a distraction from Venezuela's
troubles.
At a plaza in the upscale Los Palos Grandes neighborhood on Sunday, the
crowd included children still in strollers, serious white-haired men and
young adults clad in their favorite teams' jerseys. Traders clutched
scribbled inventories and printed-out spreadsheets, asking anyone who
lingered, "Are you selling?"
Viennelys Areala said the morning of trading helped take her mind off
the ways in which her life has become more difficult in recent years in
Venezuela, which has been struggling with high inflation and shortages
of basic goods. The country has been shaken by anti-government protests
during the past few months, and the plaza is still decorated with
anti-administration signs and graffiti.
The sticker craze sweeps through the region every four years with the
start of the World Cup. Latin America is the top market for official
sticker distributor Panini, and sales are typically highest in Brazil.
Stickers are pricier in Venezuela than in other Latin American
countries, and collectors say it can cost more than 12,000 bolivars to
fill an album. That's about $2,000 at the official exchange rate, or
$200 at the black market rate.
Preschool teacher Maria Carolina has started selling stickers as a
second job, buying packs in bulk and setting up shop every weekend in
the plaza. It keeps her from watching World Cup matches, but that's what
Twitter updates are for, she said.
Panini, which is based in Italy, will sell desperate collectors a
limited number of stickers to order. But buying missing stickers is more
expensive than trading, and it's considered bad form.
Yet some fans feel they have little choice. The collecting deadline is looming with the end of the World Cup next month.
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Hannah Dreier on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hannahdreier
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