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A Messi sticker for 300 envelopes: schism in Argentina due to the lack of World Cup figures

2022-09-22T10:42:31.539Z


The Government intervenes between the kiosks and the Panini company due to the shortage of stickers for the Qatar event


The World Cup album is a serious thing in Argentina.

The shortage of figurines, as they call the cards in the South American country, is so brutal that the Government has had to mediate between the kiosks and the Panini company to order things a bit.

Argentines stand in line for hours to get an envelope, while prices skyrocket on the black market.

On the internet, Messi's extra card is offered at 45,000 pesos, about 300 dollars, enough to buy 300 packages.

Also complete teams at 8,000 pesos or 100 figures "without repeating" at 14,000.

Vendors selling fake figurines proliferate on public transport.

The newsstands are on fire.

They denounce that Panini has put them out of business to favor unconventional points of sale such as supermarkets, gas stations or online sales applications.

"I never saw this," says Juan Vargas, owner of a shop that sells comics and figurines on Lavalle and Florida, two of the most commercial streets in downtown Buenos Aires.

Since August 24, when the Panini collection was launched, Vargas has not stopped.

He remembers that the fever was such that customers tried to break his marquee when he said that he had no more envelopes.

“The distributors distributed the boxes a week before launch.

I started with 2,000 packs and sold them in one day.

But people get violent”, he complains.

The statistics prove Vargas right: compared to Russia 2018, during this campaign 42% more albums and 18% more figurines were sold for the same number of weeks.

The spike in demand was unexpected, but it makes sense.

The reasons for the shortage are not clear.

On the one hand, the buying fever, which has destroyed all forecasts.

On the other, conspiracy theories are multiplying: there is no paper because imports have closed, the figurines are sold to Brazil or there is a Panini strategy to accelerate compulsive sales as the World Cup in Qatar approaches.

The whatsapp groups of school fathers and mothers have become a channel of attentive spies.

“In Santa Fe and Coronel Díaz they have figurines.

I just passed by and there is a line”;

“I bought the album and they have more.

Does anyone want?"

The kiosks juggle.

They put up posters with the legend "We don't have figurines" tired of saying that they haven't arrived.

In others they are less friendly.

Claudio Páez has five stores and on a yellow card he wrote by hand “Traitor Panini”.

“We sold them the figurines all year long, the oil company didn't and the supermarket didn't either.

What they have done is disloyal”, she complains.

The Kiosqueros of CABA, GBA and the interior of the Country are still without Figurines and Albums, while the Super and Oil Companies are receiving merchandise to Burst.

– Claudio Aníbal Paez (@claukiosquero) August 27, 2022

The Government then summoned the parties to a meeting at the Secretary of Commerce.

The magnitude of the event, with four senior officials at the helm, deserved criticism in a country where other emergencies, such as inflation at 78.5% year-on-year, are more pressing.

"For many it may be banal, but for the kiosk it is the plate of food," justified Ernesto Acuña, vice president of the chamber that groups them.

For now, they only received a promise of official mediation between Panini and the vendors.

From the company they deny any type of favoritism.

And they ask for patience in the face of scarcity.

“We do not like that these imbalances are armed.

We want to deliver as much as possible,” Panini's vice president in Argentina, Nicolás Sallustro, said a few days ago.

And he assured that no one will be left without completing his album.

The meeting began to assess the situation of the World Cup figurines market.

From @ComercioArg we open a dialogue channel between @ukraok and @PaniniArg, making our legal and technical teams available to collaborate in the search for possible solutions.

pic.twitter.com/upeLAtg4cD

– Secretary of Commerce (@ComercioArg) September 20, 2022

But the Argentines have lost their minds over the World Cup figures.

Julián Ramírez, a 22-year-old nursing student, stood in line last Wednesday from six in the morning in front of the Juan Vargas store.

"It's the only place where I can get and they already gave us a number," he says.

Behind her was Luisa Gonzáles, a 64-year-old woman who made the effort to give envelopes to her grandchildren.

Vargas complains that two of his three distributors told him they were closing for vacations.

And he is suspicious of the proliferation of overpriced offers that swarm the internet.

When figurines are missing, everything becomes more expensive.

In Parque Rivadavia, a traditional “repeated” exchange center, they ask for up to 300 pesos (almost two dollars) per envelope, double its market value.

The kiosks also suffer, because the distributors raise the wholesale price and reduce the profit margin of the last link in the chain.

"They sell me the envelopes for 105 pesos, but they have even asked me for 150, which is the retail value," says Julio, owner of a kiosk in Villa Urquiza, a middle-class neighborhood north of the capital.

On a desk, Juan Vargas has some 1,000 loose figurines.

They are the ones he had left after completing two of the albums that he will later sell assembled to collectors.

“I opened two boxes of 1,000 envelopes to fill all the pages.

I exchange the repeated ones at the store or I sell them loose”, he says.

Vargas confirms that the extras, which are not numbered and are dedicated to big stars like Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, are especially difficult to get.

“In a box of 1,000 envelopes I got four and in another six,” he says.

“I have already sold 25,000 envelopes, at a rate of five figurines each, and Messi's extra came out only once,” reveals Vargas, who follows the trajectory of the stickers in his social network groups.

Getting "an extra Messi" can be a big deal.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-09-22

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