By Roberto Vega Andersen

When the echoes of the Soccer World Cup still vibrate in our minds and we enjoy the recognition of the national team players in their foreign clubs -so lukewarm in the Parisian PSG with Lionel Messi-, this time we want to deal with a "minor issue". that has entered the hearts of so many children and young people by awakening in all of them the passion for collecting.

We are referring to the album of figurines published by Panini, a true success within so many families in our country. Undoubtedly, it is a mass phenomenon that spanned all ages and will have resonance for decades. Today's children, when adults will remember the emotion of "discovering" this or that figurine, of exchanging the repeated ones, of having won them playing and also, lost... That magic full of intense sensations linked to pleasure will already be part of their personality. Through this trend, they identified unimaginable countries, memorized unforgettable names, linked them with searches done with the family or among schoolmates.

They will be adults and in conversations between friends or with their own children, they will recover those memories and again, they will enjoy them. In a good part of the current protagonists we find future collectors who will have built their passion from this first album of figurines.

If we now consult active collectors about the origin of their habit, the vast majority will go to some anecdote from childhood or adolescence and surprisingly, there will be many who will admit that, without imagining it, one day they identified themselves as collectors after traveling a road without a road map... They reached that stage and they enjoy it. To those who experience this in years to come, perhaps at that moment they will realize that the origin of their passion was born with an early episode in their lives whose protagonist was that album of World Cup figurines that Argentina won for the third time in 2022.

Till March

With this delivery, enriched by the texts of Irina Podgorny, Ana Martínez Quijano, Liliana Barela, Guillermo Palombo, Abel Alexander and from Uruguay, Leonel García, all prestigious authors in their respective spaces, we want to thank you for your company and announce that we will return in March with the number twenty-four.

Know that we have grown with the support of each one of you and you are invited to write us your comments on our publications. They will surely guide us in the search for a more mature and responsible dialogue. Thank you!