Organized meetings known as pontos de troca have helped cash-strapped collectors band together and get round price increase

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

On a sunny afternoon outside Sao Paulo’s modern art museum, more than 100 people have gathered to trade football stickers, using paper charts or mobile phone apps to keep record of their collections.

Brazil is still reeling from an institutional and political crisis and only just crawling out of a brutal recession, but for one month the World Cup offers some escape from the country’s record unemployment and spiraling violence.

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And this year, organized swap meetings – known in Portuguese as pontos de troca – “swap points” have sprung up across the country, helping cash-strapped collectors band together, and get around a dramatic surge in sticker prices.

Renato Vasconcelos had collected World Cup football stickers since he was a child, but thought he wouldn’t bother this year when Panini announced in March that it was doubling the price of the five-sticker packets.

“I never managed to complete an album before and with the increase in prices, I thought it would be impossible,” said the 33-year-old systems analyst.

Yet as the tournament begins, Renato is the proud owner of a completed album – and his partner Mariana is just three stickers short.

The couple attribute much of their success to the proliferation of pontos de troca.

Facilitated by social media, meetups have been held in parks, stadiums, barbershops and even churches from the industrial powerhouses of the south-east to the jungle cities of the Amazon.

With the price increase to two reais (about 50 cents or 40p) for a packet of five stickers, the minimum cost to complete this year’s 682-sticker Panini album is 274 reais ($72 or £55).

The problem this year is the bloody shiny ones Francisco Silva, 53

But that would be without any repeated stickers, which is virtually impossible. Economists estimate that to complete an album alone would average about 2,000 reais ($525/£395). In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s richest state, the average monthly income was 1,712 reais in 2017, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

Gabriel Tasca, 27, completed his first album by acquiring one of the rarer shiny metallic stickers of the Uruguay aquad from Renato’s partner Mariana at the modern art museum swap point, receiving claps and cheers.

“I managed to save a lot of money,” he said, estimating that he had spent 300 reais on stickers, before offering his remaining spares to whoever wanted them.

Sticker swap meets organized via social media networks first gained national attention before the 2014 World Cup, which Brazil hosted, but since then have grown in popularity.

“With the crisis and price increases, more people are opting for swap points this year,” said Diego Moreira, who runs the site Passion to Collect, which lists swap point times and locations with a Facebook group that has nearly 50,000 members across Brazil.

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But while collectors say “swap points” have helped out their wallets, many have other complaints. “The problem this year is the bloody shiny ones,” said Francisco Silva, 53, a confectionery shop worker, now on his second album this year, and who has collected every year since 1990.

Francisco and other collectors allege that the metallic shiny stickers are in unusually short supply this year and accused Panini of producing fewer to increase profits. Panini denies the allegation.

But amid the apparent scarcity, a lucrative black market flourishes. Hardcore collectors disapprove of paying for rarities – instead of swapping them, but at the Sao Paulo modern art museum swap point, some were willing to break the taboo.

Collectors at the swap point muttered darkly about a boy who had recently bought the last sticker he needed for 50 reais.

“It’s exploitation,” said Vasconcelos. “I think it shows a lack of character.”