Meet a FCK collector

Spring has yet to shake itself free from winter's cold and the gray sky with accompanying drizzle. Only the budding green shoots on the city's trees confirm that it's April 16. In the hours before the second match in the Championship Playoff against Viborg FF, I meet Kasper Maes at the aging side-street bar Holstein Bodega, just a stone’s throw from Parken Stadium.

Kasper is better known as The Copenhagen Card Collector and runs the website thecopenhagencardcollection.dk, where you're greeted with the introduction: "Here on this site, you’ll find images of 99% of all football cards and stickers featuring F.C. Copenhagen across all known series." So we sit down to talk about collecting FCK football cards in the dim lighting of the bar, accompanied by a few draft beers.

When did you become an FCK fan?

“My father and grandfather took me to B1903’s matches when I was just a kid. I don’t really remember my first FCK games, but theoretically, I must have been there since 1992. I didn’t really have a choice; I was born into it and have always watched matches with my dad, even up until now.”

How and when did you start collecting FCK football cards?

“I’ve probably always had a bit of collector’s mania, like so many others. As a kid, I also collected those Dandy football playing cards from the 1986 World Cup but stopped after a while. In 2014, my oldest son wanted to collect World Cup cards. I got hooked again.

It ended up with me almost taking over the collection. Shortly after, I realized that trading cards in the U.S. were a whole other thing than here at home. So, after a few years, I thought, ‘Why not collect FCK cards?’ That’s how the collection started about seven years ago. Shortly after, there was this FCK Experience in the shop, and I was wildly disappointed that they only had two cards, which weren’t even from FCK’s own series. A disaster, I thought, so I just had to start gathering everything together. There were quite a few cards I hadn’t collected when they first came out, so it was a bit of a challenge.”

FCK Premiere is FCK’s own card series from 2001/02. How do you find the cards, and how many do you have?

“On eBay, DBA, and especially Facebook. You get to know some people slowly. You meet people who know others, and then you get hold of some things. There’s quite a large community for football card collectors. It has grown a lot over the last few years, especially during the pandemic.

I now have around 500 different FCK cards. But I also collect cards with FCK players in other jerseys. There haven’t been FCK cards for many years, so I had to collect something. For example, I have cards with Delaney or Cornelius.”

What’s interesting about football cards?

“I found that it’s actually very relaxing to sit and sort through these cards. You can put daily work aside by just sorting a bit. The cards tell their own story. If you look at the first FCK cards from 1995-96, you’ll see legends like Lars Højer but also players like Morten Nielsen, Stefan K. Hansen, and Carsten Hallum, who few remember today but were big talents back then. It’s fun to see.

Today, the market is a bit of a jungle. Last year, I started collecting Daramy cards because they were released for the first time. In total, 200 different versions. There’s a base card, which also comes in a red version, a blue version, a numbered version, a first edition, a chrome version, a Japanese version, and so on.

It’s big, complicated, and a massive money machine. They release so many series that it’s hard to believe. The American company Tops now has the rights to the UEFA Champions League, Europa League, and so on, and they released the first series of Champions League cards a few weeks ago, featuring FCK. It’s the first time in several years that new FCK cards have been released. So I’ve been busy. You can’t buy them in Denmark, only online, and they’re relatively expensive – 67 kroner for a pack of ten cards, and that’s on the cheaper end for American football cards.

You can get an autograph card with Messi or Haaland that really costs a fortune. Of course, they come in many versions. For example, this new series from Tops comes in a white base version, and a purple one, with only 30 issued. Then there’s an orange version with 25 copies, a black one with 10 copies, a red one with 5, and a yellow one with just one, and so on.

So I’m busy because I want to have all the FCK cards, as far as possible.”

What’s the most expensive card you’ve bought?

“I haven’t bought anything particularly expensive. Maybe a couple thousand kroner at most. That’s the level for FCK cards. But there are football cards sold for over a million kroner. Old cards with Pelé are very pricey. Like some of Haaland’s first Salzburg cards, especially the low-numbered ones, they’re worth a fortune.

Rookie cards, that is, players' first cards, are something Americans go crazy over. That tradition comes from their baseball culture, of course. Everyone knows that’s where the money is, so the market goes nuts every time a new player appears who they think has potential. Rasmus Højlund’s regular Panini sticker from Italy has already become pretty expensive, now costing 15-20 dollars. That’s also my challenge with these new cards. Tops has chosen to include young FCK players. Precisely because we have a big rookie potential.

Interestingly, Midtjylland wasn’t chosen when they were in the Champions League. But Tops sensed the hype around our Champions League team, so they deliberately chose Roony and Clem, as well as Isak and Hákon, and even Noah Sahsah, who has barely played. All five have received a rookie logo. This has driven American collectors crazy. They think Roony is the next Messi. So you can’t get his card for reasonable money, which is frustrating when you just want to complete an FCK collection.

In the U.S., they also send their cards for ‘grading.’ That means companies that verify the card’s authenticity and give it a grade from 1 to 10 on how nice it is. Then it’s placed in a small plastic case with the grade and information, and the value rises a lot. This is already happening now for the best Roony cards.”

New Tops card with Roony and autograph. The Rookie logo (RC) acts like a red flag for American collectors. A final note is that Roony’s first real card in the 1/1 variant (meaning only one exists), and graded by the market’s leading company (PSA) to 10, which is the highest possible grade, meaning the card is theoretically flawless, is priced at the neat sum of 20,000 dollars!

What are the hardest cards to get?

“In the Danish series, there have been special cards, test prints, that were never in any packs. I managed to get hold of them, but I actually haven’t posted them on the website. This includes a Bolaños card and a Wiland card. They’re not particularly valuable because there are so few hardcore FCK collectors, but they were tough to get. And then there are the American ones; I’m still missing all the 001-numbered cards – they’re impossible to find.

You could also mention the pirate series from the Greek company Golden Shop. They more or less just stole Panini’s pictures and released them themselves. The cards were produced in very poor quality. I got them through a Greek contact.”

What do you see as the future for this hobby?

“Well, I always hope that FCK will release their own series again. That would be so great. But I think they got a bit burned back in 2001. My sense is that maybe the cards were priced a bit too high, but it was actually a really cool series. They were way ahead of their time with autographs and cut-out jerseys, and so on. But there are more and more of us collecting. On Facebook, there’s a lot of buying, selling, and trading going on. We’ve gone from 300 to 3,000 members in the group in just a couple of years, so I think it will keep growing.”