The Most Expensive Football Card

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The Most Expensive Football Card

After looking at some of the A&BC Gum sets, I was curious about what the most expensive football card of all time is.

It’s actually not all that surprising.

I suppose this technically counts as a Pele “rookie card,” though the truth is that rookie cards don’t seem to make a huge difference in the limited football card market.

And, as you can see, this card is printed in Swedish.

Alifabolaget produced numerous card sets throughout the years, ranging from a set of cards promoting the 1936 Berlin Olympics to numerous cards commemorating Disney movies and the like.

This set of 35 international footballers was printed in 1958, and commemorated Sweden hosting the World Cup that year. The cards were numbered between 615 and 650, and are extremely scarce. Word has it that only 167 copies of this Pele card have been identified.

More information is available on this excellent page.

Word has it that a copy of this card recently sold for about $1.2 million. That might seem high to you, but it’s not all that high in the world of high end sports cards — especially for a card that has under 200 known copies worldwide.

In other words — that $1.2 million price tag might be a bargain.