Acuña has his kiosk in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Urquiza and last Friday he received the first batch of albums and figurines just before the “Children’s Day” celebration. “Sales were boosted for this reason, but the passion for collecting is increasing World after World Cup,” said Acuña, who sold 150 packages to one person over the weekend. According to the UKRA, the replacement is expected for today or at the latest on “Thursday or Friday”.
In Argentina, the official Panini license is held by the company New Rita SA installed in the Buenos Aires town of Martínez, San Isidro district. The company has an online sales channel called ZonaKids.com where presales began on Monday. The suggested prices for the sale are the following: the envelope with five figurines is 150 pesos, the album is 750 pesos and the special hardcover album is 3,000 pesos. Special promotions for combos with a 5% discount were also launched on that site, which today already had the “out of stock” sign. The hardcover album with 100 envelopes had a final price of 17,100 pesos, the common one with the same amount came out at 14,962.50 and the same with half the envelopes 8,250. Regarding the last World Cup, Russia 2018, the price of the envelopes went from 15 to 150 pesos and the album from $50 to $750. And 20 years ago, in Korea-Japan, the envelope cost 75 cents and the album 3 pesos.
On the internet there is a wide range of sales channels but, according to Acuña, distributors will give priority to kiosks that “wait four years” to reactivate sales of an item hit by the economic situation, even if the profit margin does not exceed 30%. The passion for collecting World Cup figurines is a tradition that is passed down from generation to generation.
The objective of the collectors, without a doubt, is to fill the album with 638 figurines and the calculation of the total investment ranges from 20 thousand to 60 thousand pesos. A cheaper option is the virtual album, which is an application that is downloaded to different mobile devices. There, each user creates an account free of charge and will have two digital envelopes available daily. The filling mechanism tries to be similar to the physical model since there is the possibility of exchanging figurines with other users and obtaining promotional codes that will be delivered by Panini and the soft drink company that has the marketing rights.
On social networks and in WhatsApp groups, people organize to get together to exchange figurines and videos of reactions are also viral, such as that of an excited boy who got the Lionel Messi figurine in the first package. This edition also received some criticism since the fixture has the start date of the World Cup on November 21 because it was printed before the change in FIFA – it went to 20 – and the traditional numbering was not respected. Each page of the 32 selected is numbered from 1 to 19 and for example, in Argentina, 10 went to Ángel Di María and 19 to Messi.
Source: Ambito
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