UDINESE

Here he is, Giovanni Stroppa, the figure is widely regarded as the rarest figure Corinthian has ever released!

 

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Giovanni Stroppa in the white and black kit of Udinese is often considered the holy grail of released Headliners. Released in Italy as part of the second wave of Italian Superstars back in July of 1997 and he has hardly been seen for sale in the secondary market since.

 

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Corinthian did, however, manage to obtain a very limited number of Stroppa's in clear sachet format, which were available for sale at the inaugural collectors convention in 1999. The price for this figure was just £5!!!

 

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Reasons as to why the Stroppa figure is so rare are not uncommon, low production volume, limited distribution etc, but perhaps the main reason for his scarcity is that most collectors would not have known about his release and here is why

 

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He was part of the second wave of Italian Superstars, which came with a new collectors information file depicting the new figures but it was not Stroppa who was pictured as the Udinese figure, it was in fact German marksman Oliver Bierhoff.

 

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In fact Stroppa was not listed on either of the 2 different collectors information files, so unless you actually saw the figure in the shop you would have been unaware of his release, very hard to get something when you do not even realise it exists!

 

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All of those elements have combined to make this perhaps the rarest of all figures and appears on many collectors wanted lists and will most likely reside on there for a long time.

 

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It has long been debated which of the 3 Italian SuperStars Headliners is the rarest, Andersson, Stroppa or Schwarz and in actuality there is very little, if anything between them but i have always placed Stroppa as #1, reason being more collectors need him than need Andersson or Schwarz, but the debate between collector's will always continue.

 

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Giovanni Stroppa for Udinese was released in blister pack and came with collector card and information leaflet.