A rare Diego Maradona card set has surfaced four decades after it was first printed in Spain.
The unique 50-card issue is actually a puzzle of Maradona.
He’s shown wearing his Argentina national team jersey during the international friendly match vs England in May of 1980.
According to Miami Sport Cards, the puzzle card sets were produced by Mateo Mirete of Spain and were sold via packs or included as prizes inside pouches of pipe tobacco.
“The paper is kind of a heavy stock translucent parchment type,” avid soccer collector Rony Almeida told us. “From what I’ve seen, the single album page where these were glued had an identical Maradona image in pink hues, each rectangle numbered.”
Once the cards were attached to the pre-printed album page, they could then be exchanged for a prize, typically a soccer ball. That’s a major part of the reason why complete or near complete sets are unheard of these days. This is the second known to exist.
Miami Sport Cards says it took a collector nearly all of the last 42 years to assemble the set.
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