In celebration of the 2024 Copa America Tournament, Game Stop is offering a $25K bounty on a 1/1 Lionel Messi Panini Copa America Black Sticker. This is probably the most sought out sticker out of the Panini collection. The bounty for this item will close at the end of the year.

Last month Game Stop announced that they will double down on collectibles and extended their trade-in program to PSA graded sports and gaming cards. Great to see them involved in a bounty like this.

https://x.com/GameStop/status/1809361664539537416

This is my first post on Mantel, so I had to make it a big one...

Back in 2021, a group of friends and I won the auction for Lionel Messi's membership card from his boyhood club in Rosario, Argentina: Newell's Old Boys

We paid ~ $180,000, which is obviously a lot of money, but it still felt like a steal to us as his rookie card from the 2004-05 Panini Megacracks set (19 of which are PSA 10's) were selling for multiples of that figure at the time, yet this card was and is:

— A 1 of 1, that Messi presumably carried with him for six years during his time at Newell's academy.
— His earliest known autograph.
— Representative of the first chapter in the story of the greatest footballer of all-time.

We kept it quiet for the past couple of years, but given Inter Miami are hosting Newell's tonight in Miami for a friendly (I'll be there!) we decided to post about it.

Here's the thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brennanjp/status/1758179809383866692