Pelé 1958 Bremer Fachring Kaffee Fussballbinder-Weltmeisterschaft #8 - PSA 2, Auto 9 | On-Card Autograph

Offered is a PSA 2 example, with a beautiful on-card autograph, graded a PSA 9, of the 1959 Bremer Fach Kaffee #8 Pelé card. The card features Pelé leaping for a header during the 1958 World Cup; one of the rarest and most historically evocative cards in the entire Pelé collecting canon, distributed exclusively in the city of Bremen, Germany, in the immediate aftermath of the 1958 World Cup.

At the time of cataloging, the PSA database shows this is Population 1 with none graded higher. The PSA certification number is 72263253.

Bremer Fach Kaffee was a regional coffee company that distributed trade cards exclusively within Bremen, producing a set commemorating the 1958 World Cup that has since become among the most elusive football card issues in existence. The distribution was so geographically limited that surviving examples are extraordinarily scarce at any grade. The set is widely regarded as one of the rarest 1958-era football card issues on earth, with only a handful of copies known to exist across the entire checklist.

What this card captures is not simply Pelé in isolation. It is Pelé in the company of the men who won the world with him. The card features a photographic image of the Brazilian squad in a celebratory moment, with Pelé at the centre alongside Didi, the elegant midfield orchestrator who was named the tournament's best player; Djalma Santos, one of the greatest right-backs in the history of the game and a member of three consecutive FIFA World Cup All-Star Teams; and Gilmar, Brazil's goalkeeper across two World Cup-winning campaigns. It is a document not merely of a player but of a team, and of a moment, the weeks immediately following Brazil's first world championship, captured in a German coffee trade card distributed in a single city and preserved across nearly seven decades.

The timing and geography of this card's production give it a quality unlike almost any other Pelé collectible. While the 1958 Alifabolaget was produced in Sweden and the Ave Colecao Titulares in Brazil, the Bremer Fach Kaffee was produced in Germany, by a company with no direct connection to the tournament, for a regional audience that had watched from a distance as a seventeen-year-old from Tres Coracoes changed the sport. It is a card born of fascination rather than proximity, produced because what had happened in Sweden that summer demanded to be commemorated even by those who were not there.

The 1958 World Cup was the stage on which Pelé announced himself to the world. He entered the tournament as a substitute, barely known outside of Santos. He finished it with six goals in four matches, a hat-trick in the semi-final against France, and two goals in the final itself, becoming both the youngest scorer and the youngest winner in World Cup history, records that stand to this day. The Brazilian government subsequently declared him an official national treasure to prevent his transfer abroad. This card was produced in the wake of that transformation, for a European audience that had watched and could not look away.

Going Deeper | Pelé

Often considered the greatest footballer of all time, Pelé joined Santos FC as a fifteen-year-old in 1956 and quickly developed into one of the league's most prolific scorers. He gained global recognition at the 1958 World Cup, where he scored six goals across four matches, was named to the World Cup All-Star Team, and became the youngest player ever to appear in and score in a World Cup Final.

He went on to help Brazil win the Jules Rimet trophy again in 1962 and 1970. His three World Cup victories remain the most of any player in the history of football. At Santos across nineteen seasons, he scored 643 goals for the club, a record that stood as the most goals for a single club for over forty years until surpassed by Lionel Messi in 2020.

Upon joining the New York Cosmos in 1975, Pelé brought an entirely new level of visibility to football in the United States. He led the Cosmos to the 1977 NASL Championship and set multiple attendance records, including a crowd of 77,691 for the Cosmos' 1977 playoff match against the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. The youth participation boom that followed laid the foundation for the 1994 World Cup, the launch of MLS in 1996, and the return of the World Cup to North America in 2026.

He was named joint FIFA Player of the Century alongside Diego Maradona. He passed away on 29 December 2022 at the age of eighty-two. Sotheby's is proud to present this extraordinarily rare example from one of the most geographically limited and historically significant football card issues ever produced, a record of the moment the world discovered Pelé, preserved in a city that was simply paying attention.