My name is Peter Pesti, I was born in Hungary 28 years ago. Since I was a child, I have always liked soccer. Any time I could, I played soccer with my friends or watched it on TV. Whenever my father went abroad on a business trip, he took either a soccerball or a soccer shirt for me. I started to collect both but now I only collect soccerballs. I never was a professional player, I only play for fun like many other collector friends of mine. But whenever I go abroad I always visit a famous stadium or a soccer museum or we attend games if they are available.
I collect soccer balls since 1999 when I traveled to the USA for the first time in my life. During the past years I had many soccerballs but I could not keep them in my home because I never had enough space for them to display. I have always been sad to say goodbye for any of them, so I wanted to find a way to keep them together. And this dream gave me the idea to create this website! There are namely a few websites on the internet where you can find many soccerballs but there is no other website where all the balls are photographed the same way in such a special atmosphere! So this is a virtual collection here! I have done my best to buy as many balls as possible to take pictures of them for the site and I also took the time to visit some great collector friends in Europe to take pictures of their balls for the site, too!
In September 2007 I visited Tiziano Lanza from Verona, Italy. He has many great balls in his collection. I took my photo equipment to his house and took pictures of all his balls for the site. After we were done, the next collector friend to visit was Javier Pinero from Bilbao, Spain. On the way there we stopped in Barcelona and we saw a Champions League match in the Nou Camp. Unfortunately, while we were in the stadium, our car was robbed out! I lost my all my photo equipment, my laptop, my money, my bank cards, my clothes and ids... so we had to travel back to Hungary. This loss was unbelievable - and all this trip happened to take pictures for this site... At that moment I almost gave up my dream... But later I bought another professional photo equipment and sent it to Javier with the grass and reflector and all the other necessary items for the creation of the new pictures. Javier made a professional job taking pictures of his entire collection following my instructions. When he finished his work, he sent everything back to me and I started to buy balls again to take pictures of them for the site, too.
In January 2009 I visited René Sopp from Leipzig, Germany and I took pictures of his balls, too. With this trip at René, the number of the balls on this site exceeded 172 and it is still growing. If anybody of you has a ball that is missing from this site, please contact me and maybe I buy it to take an official shot. After I am done, I can send it back. My goal is to make this virtual collection complete.
While I was taking pictures for the site, I created a map where you can find soccerball collectors from different parts of the world and you can read their profile. My dream is to welcome as many registered collectors as possible. If you have not registered yet, please do so. This site should be the meeting point of collectors because there is no other such map on the web for soccerball collectors. You can upload pictures of your balls, collection and even yourself or your family. Let's get to know a bit more each other. We come from different countries but we all have the same hobby!
What else should I say? I am glad that you visited the site, I did it for you, after all. Please help me to share this site with as many people as possible. Tell about it to your friends or link it into forums. (Google will not find it, because it was programmed in flash, but I think many people would love to see it anyway.)
And if you have any additional info about any ball, please do not hesitate to share it with me. I would add the text to the INFO section of the specific ball.
Thank you again and have fun on the site!