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Very Rare 1973 Philadelphia Atoms North American Soccer League 10K Gold Championship Ring
Very Rare 1973 Philadelphia Atoms North American Soccer League 10K Gold Championship Ring
 
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Product Code: RNASL73ATOMS
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This VERY RARE, Historic 1973 Philadelphia Atoms North American Soccer League (N.A.S.L.) Champions 10K Gold Ring is manufactured by Balfour, and weighs an impressive 31.8-Grams (Over 1-Ounce) of 10K White Gold!!! In 29-years of collecting Championship rings .......We have never seen this elusive ring offered before! To give you an idea ......It's just as LARGE as the 1972 or '73 Miami Dolphins Super Bowl Rings, or even BIGGER than the 1970's NBA Championship Rings, issued from 1970 to 1983. This really unique NASL Ring is a Size 12-1/4 to 12-3/4 and was never issued to a player, so it's in almost perfect *Mint* Condition, with the original BALFOUR markings and no name or position ever engraved on the side. The Philadelphia Atoms joined the NASL as an expansion team in 1973. They were the first expansion team, ever, to win a championship in its 1st year in any American professional sport!! The fact that they accomplished this with a squad managed by an American coach, and a team that was largely made-up of Americans, led to the first Sports Illustrated cover to feature a soccer player. Their victory was in no small measure, responsible for saving the North American Soccer League from dissolution. The Philadelphia Atoms were part of a new trend in American Soccer toward professionalism, in which teams backed by business owners or groups, would have unprecedented media coverage on a National scale. The resulting soccer explosion of the 1970's led to the rapid expansion of youth soccer programs across the U.S.. This in turn led to the movement of soccer into the national sports consciousness, the rise of the US national team as a legitimate power in world soccer, and the eventual establishment of a stable and league. In their success, the Philadelphia Atoms foreshadowed the development of American-born players as capable of professional-level quality on the pitch and as legitimate favorites in the stands on a scale never before evident and now regularly apparent in the MLS.They quieted skeptics by showing that an American-born coach could lead a team largely made up of American players to a national championship. Their success parked fan interest in a struggling NASL, leading to a resurgence in the league that only increased with the signing of Pele and other world famous international players. In the four seasons that the Atoms played int he NASL, the number of teams in the league more than doubled from nine to twenty. As such, the Atoms played a major role in the soccer explosion that continues in America to this day. SOLD

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