ANNOUNCER:
00:00:01
60 Minutes Rewind. The World Cup kicked off today in Qatar. And while you'll hear all manner of óles and áles over the next four weeks, this might be the event's ultimate soundtrack, got, got, need. It's not the scalpers hawking tickets. It's the refrain of fans sifting through packs of World Cup stickers. Think soccer's answer to baseball cards. Before the 1970 World Cup, four brothers in Italy, the Paninis, began printing collectibles featuring images of players from every country in the competition. More than 50 years later, fans all over the globe scour for that obscure Serbian goalkeeper or elusive Lionel Messi, hoping to complete their albums. The Panini sticker phenomenon has become a booming international business and a central part of the World Cup experience. [CHEERING] For millions of soccer fans, the World Cup unofficially began weeks ago-- [CHEERING] --when the Panini stickers for this quadrennial event shot onto the market. Yes, Morgan, Morgan, Morgan! Oh, I got Argentina! Yes, I got Ronaldo!
JON WERTHEIM:
00:01:14
In a classroom in the town of Sudbury, England, in the thrumming cities of Sao Paulo-- [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:01:22
--and Mexico City-- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:01:26
--fans of all stripes embarked on a common treasure hunt-- Anybody got that extra Ronaldo one?
JON WERTHEIM:
00:01:31
--collecting 670 stickers depicting the players and teams from this World Cup-- I'm like, shaking. I finally did it.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:01:39
--all so they can complete their album. Listen, if you have gold or Panini sticker today, people will go for the sticker and not the gold. Panini sticker is more valuable than gold, you're saying? Today, yes. The sports--
JON WERTHEIM:
00:01:52
Francesco Furnari is the biggest official Panini distributor in the United States. [TAPE SQUEAKS] An Italian-Venezuelan American, he is the ultimate Panini sticker evangelist. '74--
JON WERTHEIM:
00:02:05
He's completed every sticker album since 1974, including the 2022 vintage many times over. I have already seven. You're a man in your 50s. You have seven albums completed? And still counting. [LAUGHTER] [SCANNER BEEPS]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:02:23
A pack costs $1.20. And Furnari predicts sticker sales from 2022 will reach 100 million packets in the US alone, nearly a billion worldwide. We're talking about a little piece of paper with some adhesive on it. What makes this so special? John, you can understand that you have all your legends. You have all your best players at a distance of your hand. You can touch them. You can talk to them. It's fantastic.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:02:55
How coveted are these things? When Argentina ran out of stickers in September, its secretary of commerce called an emergency meeting to solve this national crisis. We live in a digital world. How are these paper stickers still this popular? This sensation, John, to get a pack, to rip it out, to smell it, to open it, and to find the place right here, there is no way you can replicate it in an electronic way. So you even have a method for how you're ripping that packet open. Every single pack has to be done in the same way. By the way, I've opened at least-- Done this before. --probably 2,000 packs up until now. [PACK RIPS] Oh my God, Germany. This is a good one, good pack? That was a good pull. I love it.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:03:48
We went to Modena, Italy, to Panini's headquarters, the equivalent of Willy Wonka's factory, as Paninis rolled off the press 21 hours a day, 11 million packets a day, each containing five stickers, the headliners, Mbappé, Messi, Modric, and the coming stars, players with four names. And there's Fred. [CHURCH BELL RINGING] The phenomenon started here, next to the cathedral, at a newspaper kiosk in the center of town. After World War II, Olga Panini, a widow, ran the newsstand with her four sons. Not unlike a soccer team, each had a special skill. The oldest son, Giuseppe, was the dreamer with the big plans. [SPEAKING ITALIAN] Cheers.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:04:39
We met Giuseppe's son, Antonio, and Giuseppe's nieces, Laura and Lucia Panini, in Modena. He was like a volcano. He had many, many ideas. A volcano? A volcano, yes.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:04:51
Giuseppe's initial idea was to sell cards depicting flowers-- --and was a disaster. But they realized that the formula was OK, not the subject.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:05:02
Short of lira, Giuseppe had, as it were, one last shot on goal. It was 1961, and he turned to a new subject, Italian soccer. It was a hit, especially with the kids, even if production was rudimentary. All the stickers were printed and then were cut. And they were mixing with a shovel at the beginning. To make sure there were no duplicates, they mixed with a shovel? Then they replaced the shovel with a churn, the one they used normally for making butter. The butter churn? Yes, yes, yes, and they had a handle. And they were moving this handle. And it was working.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:05:37
Giuseppe's brother, Umberto, the family engineer, invented machinery that mixed stickers to prevent dreaded duplicates in each pack. His contraptions were so successful, the designs are still in use today, 60 years later, and enabled the brothers to scale up their ambitions. Before the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, they paid $1,000 cash to soccer's governing body to buy the rights to produce stickers of the players, not least, the great Pelé. Suddenly, Panini became chiefly associated not with a sandwich but with a worldwide pastime, the growth of the stickers mirroring the growth of soccer. [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:06:17
Antonio Allegra, Panini's marketing director, told us how collecting the World Cup albums over the decades became a rite of passage, also a way to mark time. Wow, it's the first appearance for Diego Armando Maradona in a World Cup.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:06:32
This was Maradona's first World Cup? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this one is Germany, 2006. And here we have a very, very young Messi. This teenager right here? Yeah, he's 19.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:06:47
There are countries that have fallen off the map and hairstyles that have fallen out of fashion. He looks like the drummer. Marcella Mannori is Panini's project manager overseeing image control. Sometimes, these pictures are not perfect. Might be too dark. Maybe there's a pimple on someone's face. And we are asked to remove it. A little Photoshop? Correct. I heard one story of a federation once getting in touch and saying, this guy's really ugly. Can you do something about that? Yes, it's the truth. Should we name names? No, I'm still working with these people. [LAUGHTER] So what do you do when you get that call? First reply is, of course, no worry. I mean, we're going to change the picture. Second time, third time, fourth time-- the fourth time, I will say, listen, this is his face. It's his face. I'm sorry, I mean, we did all we could. [CHATTER]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:07:44
What do players think of sticker madness? We asked Gigi Buffon, who literally saved Italy during its run to the World Cup trophy in 2006, one of the greatest-ever goalkeepers. [CHATTER] At age 44, he's not only still playing, but let's keep this between us, he's still collecting stickers, a hobby since childhood. When you still collect, where are you getting your stickers? [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
INTERPRETER:
00:08:15
Now and again, I like the ritual of going to the kiosk to buy, say, 10 packets of stickers. It's a little embarrassing. But now I can say to the kiosk owner, the stickers are for my kids, and he believes me.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:08:28
Buffon let us in on another secret. Do players swap stickers in the locker room? [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
INTERPRETER:
00:08:36
Yes, I think if we were really to investigate all the players in the locker room, I think 60% to 70% filled the album.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:08:45
Buffon appeared in four World Cup albums, aging before our eyes and his. We have visual aids. Ooh.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:08:54
His favorite sticker was for the 2006 album, the last time Italy triumphed at the World Cup. You've had your picture taken thousands of times, but you understood this is for generations. [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
INTERPRETER:
00:09:06
Yes, for sure. For me, it was a solemn moment because there was a kind of respect that I had to show towards Gigi the child and to the dreams of Gigi the child. [SPEAKING ITALIAN] [LAUGHTER]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:09:23
An hour from Buffon's practice field in Parma, we met another child at heart, Gianni Bellini-- You must have thousands of stickers-- --considered the most prolific Panini collector in the world. [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:09:36
The debut edition, Mexico 1970, is the holy grail of World Cup sticker albums. This guy has five of them. And he ain't selling. Oh my God, jeez, floor to ceiling. He lives in what is less a home than a sticker repository. Even in your daughter's room. You might have baseball cards in your attic. He has half a million stickers spilling out of every drawer. [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:10:03
Bellini even has whole sheets of them hidden under a tablecloth. No one is allowed to eat on the table because it's too sacred. It's very rare.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:10:12
These are all rare? Lucky for Gianni, his long-suffering wife, Giovanna, has a sense of humor. Heaven forbid there were a fire tonight, you had to go back into your house, what would you rescue first? [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
INTERPRETER:
00:10:24
Obviously, the stickers-- if there's a fire, my wife would run away with her own legs. Your wife can fend for herself because the stickers can't. That is the main thing.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:10:34
Saturday nights are all right for sticking at the Bellini household. While Giovanna watches a movie, Gianni fills his album and never forgets a face. Do you remember, 50 years later, what the last player was you needed to complete the album? [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
INTERPRETER:
00:10:49
I also remember the first sticker that I got in a pack, which was Sergio Carantini, a defender from Vicenza. Like your first girlfriend. [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
INTERPRETER:
00:10:58
Her, I don't remember. [LAUGHTER] [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:11:03
He's not alone in his soccer nostalgia. Those kids who grew up in the '70s collecting stickers are now grandparents and parents passing down the tradition, like Francesco Furnari in Florida. Think about this. There is no way you can find a product that you can have different generations doing at the same time. It's fantastic!
JON WERTHEIM:
00:11:26
Here's what else makes it exceptional. Mexico, Bologna.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:11:31
Almost everyone that completes their album does so not through purchase power-- Did you want to trade for this one? Oh, yeah, are you trading that USA one?
JON WERTHEIM:
00:11:38
--but through old-fashioned face-to-face trading. Around the world, there are Panini sticker swapping sessions that are organized, others that are impromptu. This next month in the desert of Qatar, one country will lift the trophy. But millions will feel their personal version of World Cup glory. You've seen people complete their albums. What is that feeling like when you get that very last sticker? Let me put it this way. Whenever you play soccer and you score a goal in the final of the tournament, that's the feeling you have whenever you complete an album. [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
JON WERTHEIM:
00:12:18
It's an old-timey analog hobby, no screen required. It relies on the humanity of touch. I'll take Fred. Just got Pelé. OK, thanks.
JON WERTHEIM:
00:12:28
And the value is largely sentimental. [CHATTER] But in these tribal, polarized times, leave it to stickers to take people and countries and bind them together.
BOY:
00:12:40
Yes, the Argentinian team. [STOPWATCH TICKING]
