THC-About Us – Corner4art

It was 1982...

… when I was 14 years old. It was a sunny Saturday morning in May when I was playing soccer at FC Barcelona city.

That day, I remember I was playing with my team as a midfielder and, suddenly, few minutes after the match kick off, I was walking directly in the direction of the local changing room with a line of blood over one of my knees.

That was something I will never forget.

I remember quite well I was a little bit confused walking on the labyrinth under FC Barcelona Stadium, where our changing room as a local team was placed, when I listened to some voices surrounding me.

I didn’t pay attention to those voices but I don’t know how I confused one of the doors of the main corridor and I opened the wrong one crashing against one person who was opening the same door from the other side.

We both tried to stop before crashing each other but it was not possible and the impact happened.

This is not too exceptional to explain but the fact was that the guy I crashed with, dressed in a blue Puma sportswear, was no other than Diego Armando Maradona the day he visited for the first time FC Barcelona club to get signed his contract as a new soccer player for the club.

God.

My absolute devotion by him was born a long time before that casual way to meet him, but from that moment a huge connection with him was restarted again and my devotion by him grew and grew the following years.

Since then, I started to collect a huge number of photos and cards paying attention to other players like Bernd Schuster, Zico, Platini, Rummenigge, Brazilian National Team or former players such as Pelé or Johan Cruyff (my other beloved player, many years before Messi came).

My most desired treasure to collect were a pair of game worn Puma King football shoes from Diego Maradona (those with the white logo above) but I’m still waiting for that day…

Our first gallery in 1998

My other two passions were music and movies but I never had the intention of connecting with each other, but the years passed and my passion for collecting was growing and growing and I never knew why…

Many years later, on my honeymoon after I got married, I traveled to New York and San Francisco where we decided to start a business based in Animation Art and Comic Art (my other passions with Classic Art and music).

Once there, I visited many sports and entertainment memorabilia stores that fascinated me deeply and I started to understand the meaning of collectibles.

It was 1998 and months later we decided to start our new animation and comic art gallery based in Barcelona introducing as well… MEMORABILIA!!!

Since then we’ve been dealing with all those categories from two different companies. First one was former BAC ART and many years later we decided to change the name to Corner4Art Gallery.

dealing with celebrities

Years later, around 2011, I had the opportunity to share with two colleagues a new international company, MyStarAutograph, where I had the possibility to keep in touch and officially represent many sports and entertainment celebrities such as Leo Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar Jr., Rafa Nadal, FC Barcelona, Manchester City, Jorge Lorenzo, Ricky Rubio and almost 50 more sport athletes and entertainment celebrities…

The company did official merchandising with digital signatures of the celebrities and hand written text with personal messages chosen by collectors under an special technology created by the company.

new times are coming to the company

Years before, in 1999 my first son, Jan, was born and he grew up surrounded by animation cels, comic strips, autographed jerseys or Hollywood stars signed photos.

He was very determined since he was a child, to become a professional soccer player and he did all the best to do it but two knee serious injuries kept him from that possibility and just gave him the possibility to study to help other people to do a real good training and become a great personal trainer.

When he finished his basic studies, after a period of time where he decided to leave the city to start his new master of online marketing, one day he came back to request me If there was any possibility to put his knowledge in practice with our family business.

And two weeks after doing his new job with us , he told me: “Dad, I was born close to memorabilia, I’m a sports freak (soccer specially), I can do something with the marketing of your products, optimize your online store and I want to find a long term job. I think there’s no other place where I’ll feel better than here. Is there something we could do?”.

He never showed me interest in the family business, but that’s what happened and one month later the new division of memorabilia was re-opened again and our new adventure was starting again under my son’s responsibility.

Since then, we’ve been buying and selling thousands and thousands of memorabilia products and recently we’ve decided to replace the former BAC ART seal to THE HERITAGE COLLECTORS brand, including new categories such as classic memorabilia, special signed items and art of sports.

The new brand still remains under the property of Corner4art, where all the family still works together since we started in 1998.