AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
In Mexico, soccer fans are playing their own game off the pitch - collecting stickers. Filling Italian comic bookmaker Panini's FIFA World Cup album is a tradition dating back to 1970. And this year's World Cup is the largest ever with 48 teams, which means filling the album is a little bit more complex and expensive. NPR's Fernando Narro reports from Mexico City.
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FERNANDO NARRO, BYLINE: In a local street market in the Condesa neighborhood, Miguel Gonzalez is selling a hot commodity.
MIGUEL GONZALEZ: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: Twenty pesos, roughly $1, for a single sticker. People collecting the album can buy packets of eight stamps for 25 pesos. But the stickers inside are a random selection. Often, buyers end up with duplicates. That's where Gonzalez comes in. He sells individual stickers people need to complete their album.
GONZALEZ: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: This is his seventh World Cup as a reseller. Gonzalez says, not all stickers are created equal. Cheap ones go for five pesos, but superstars...
GONZALEZ: Messi, Cristiano, Erling Haaland, este Mbappe, (non-English language spoken).
NARRO: Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Kylian Mbappe can go for $12 each. At 980 stickers, the album quickly becomes expensive to complete. That's why fans in Mexico City organize massive events to trade their duplicate stickers.
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NARRO: The biggest of all is in the esplanade of the Palacio de Bellas Artes. It's the city's grand opera house, home to artistic masterpieces, murals by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Canada.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Canada (non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Korea.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Korea (non-English language spoken). No?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: No.
NARRO: But today, close to a thousand people are out in the baking sun. They're wearing hats with built in umbrellas. They have handwritten lists of every player they want and every player they can give away.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Croatia.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Ah, OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: Cristian Aguayo is a 32-year-old medical resident.
CRISTIAN AGUAYO: (Non-English language spoken) Mbappe.
NARRO: He's having trouble getting French superstar Kylian Mbappe. But other than that, his day has been a success.
AGUAYO: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: He came here 170 stickers short of completing the album. Now he only needs 90.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Non-English language spoken).
GLADYS BRAVO: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: Ian Leyva is also trading stickers. He's 10 years old, and he's here with his mother. He says he's had good luck with the superstars.
IAN LEYVA: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: "I got Ronaldo on my tenth packet," he says, but he's still more than a dozen stickers short of a full album, so the negotiations continue.
BRAVO: (Non-English language spoken).
IAN: (Non-English language spoken).
BRAVO: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: They have to move from person to person comparing lists. Sometimes negotiating for a single sicker can take up to 5 minutes. For Gladys Bravo, Ian's mom, coming here and spending hours in the sun watching him trade stickers is a sacrifice, but one, she says, is teaching him a bigger lesson.
BRAVO: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: "He's on his own negotiating. He makes his own deals."
BRAVO: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: "He's learning how to trade," she says. Ian is on the hunt for a missing sticker of a Turkish player. Another kid has him, but Ian does not have a good trade. The other kid suggests another kind of deal.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: "I'll sell it to you," he says.
BRAVO: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Non-English language spoken).
BRAVO: (Non-English language spoken).
NARRO: Four pesos, or roughly a quarter. A good deal, indeed. Fernando Narro, NPR News, Mexico City. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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