New York - On June 29th, Sotheby's in New York will auction the blue number 10 jersey that Pelé wore on that same date in the 1958 World Cup final at Rasunda Stadium in Stockholm. In that game, Brazilian football won its first world title by defeating Sweden 5-2.
At 17 years old, Pelé scored two goals in the match, becoming the youngest player in history to score in a World Cup final, a record that still stands today.
Estimated at over US$6 million (more than R$30 million at the current dollar exchange rate), the shirt is the main highlight of The Beautiful Game series, which brings together iconic objects from the history of football. Bids can be placed until June 16th, and during this period, the shirt will be on display with the other items in a Sotheby's gallery, which recently moved to the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue.
“This is not just a shirt. This is the garment worn by one of the greatest players in football history on the night his reign began,” Brahm Watcher, Director of Modern Collectibles at Sotheby's, told NeoFeed .
“It was given by him personally to a friend [Dida] and carefully preserved for over six decades. Its historical importance is unparalleled in the football memorabilia market and is inseparably linked to the legacy of the sport’s first true global icon,” he added.
On the field, Pelé's first goal, Brazil's third in the match, is considered one of the most beautiful ever scored in a final: chest control, a chip over the defender, and a volley before the ball touched the ground. His second goal, a spectacular header in the final minutes, secured the victory.
In 1958, when games were still broadcast on the radio, Pelé was not yet the King of Football: the young player entered that World Cup as a reserve. The team was composed of stars like Didi, Garrincha, Vavá, and Nilton Santos.
They carried on their shoulders the responsibility of performing well after the crushing defeat Brazil suffered in the 1950 final against Uruguay at the Maracanã. Initially, the number 10 jersey belonged to Dida (Edvaldo Alves Santa Rosa), his roommate during the games. It was Dida who received the celebrated victory jersey from Pelé.
For decades, the relic was kept by Dida's family in Maceió. In 1993, it was donated to the collection of the Edvaldo Alves Santa Rosa Sports Museum in the same city. But in 2004, the museum auctioned off the shirt, where it was acquired by its current owner.
The blue color of the shirt is also part of the story: to differentiate themselves from the Swedish uniform, which was also yellow, the Brazilians had to hastily procure blue shirts days before the match - the head of the Brazilian delegation, Paulo Machado de Carvalho, told the athletes that the color was in homage to the mantle of Our Lady of Aparecida.
The players themselves improvised the numbers, cutting the fabric from the yellow equipment bags, and also manually transferring the CBD (Brazilian Sports Confederation, the name used until 1970) logo onto the new shirts.
The Beautiful Game also includes the Alifabolaget #635 Pelé Rookie Card from 1958, a collector's item estimated to be worth between US$150,000 and US$200,000. According to collector Ryan McCormick, the history of Alifabolaget dates back almost a century, when, in 1932, the Swedish company Alifa began selling trading cards along with its candies, starting with Olympic athletes from that year, followed by collections of movie stars and Disney characters.
On the Hobby News Daily website, McCormick wrote that, for the 1958 World Cup, the company produced a series of 35 cardboard stickers, measuring 3.2 cm by 4.7 cm. The collection consisted of 31 players and four stickers of the finalist teams: Sweden, West Germany, Brazil, and France.
Numbered from 615 to 650, Pelé's is number 635. On the back, it reads in Swedish: “PELÉ, left winger, the youngest player in the World Cup tournament, at 17 years old. Perhaps it's not so strange that he cried when the World Cup final was won against Sweden. He received many offers to turn professional, but for now, he remains in Brazil.”
By May 20, 2024, McCormick wrote, 167 examples had been identified and evaluated by certification companies. According to ESPN, in 2022, one of them broke a record when it was sold to the collectibles platform Rally Rd for US$1.3 million. That same year, Sotheby's in London auctioned a Diego Maradona shirt for US$9.3 million.
In New York, The Beautiful Game series will also auction off the captain's armband worn by Diego Maradona during the 1986 World Cup, valued at over US$100,000, and seven jerseys worn by Lionel Messi . One of them was part of Barcelona 's 6-1 victory over Paris Saint-Germain on March 8, 2017, in the famous "La Remontada," estimated at between US$200,000 and US$400,000.
Raise your hand if you would trade seven Messi jerseys for one Pelé jersey.
