{"id":25485,"date":"2026-09-03T22:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=25485"},"modified":"2026-09-03T22:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T22:17:17","slug":"world-cup-shirts-record-setting-boots-and-the-worlds-most-famous-napkin-the-five-most-unique-pieces-of-lionel-messi-memorabilia-ever-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=25485","title":{"rendered":"World Cup shirts, record-setting boots and the world&#8217;s most famous napkin: The five most unique pieces of Lionel Messi memorabilia ever sold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div aria-label=\"main body\">\n<div>\n<p><span>Any Messi fan knows the story. In 2000,  sporting director Carles Rexach sealed a deal to bring a small 13-year-old Argentinian kid to Catalonia. That deal was hammered out on a napkin over lunch, and it required a bit of work from Rexach given the Messi family&#8217;s concerns over Barcelona&#8217;s lack of communication after an initial trial.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;In Barcelona, on 14 December 2000 and in the presence of Messrs Minguella and Horacio,&#8221; the napkin reads if translated into English, &#8220;Carles Rexach, FC Barcelona&#8217;s sporting director, hereby agrees, under his responsibility and regardless of any dissenting opinions, to sign the player Lionel Messi, provided that we keep to the amounts agreed upon.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Few knew what that napkin would change, and no one could have predicted how much it would be worth down the line. In 2024, the napkin was sold at auction for $964,450. While it is not signed by Messi himself, it is the physical artifact that started it all, and it&#8217;s impossible to duplicate or replicate something so small yet so important.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any Messi fan knows the story. In 2000, sporting director Carles Rexach sealed a deal&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}