Worked out it'd cost the best part of a grand to fill my kid's World Cup sticker album. When did Panini become a mortgage?
Posted by kobestarr@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 68 comments
My six year old has caught World Cup fever early and demanded the Panini (not the flat sandwich) album. Fine, lovely, here's your album lad.
Then I made the rookie error of actually working out what it costs to fill it buying packets at random.
The best part of a grand. £1000!!! For stickers! 🤣
I had a couple of these myself in the 90s and I'm fairly sure my entire collection cost about a fiver, some chewing gum and a paper round.
The main reason I bought the album sticker album was because the england and scotland KO times are absolutely cursed, everything's 9pm to gone midnight!
So I was looking for ways to help him keep excited during the World Cup, knowing that we probably won't let him stay up so late to watch that many of the matches. The Panini album was one way to kind of keep him excited.
- We're also listening to the Ultimate Football Heroes kids podcast together (it's a tie in to the books that your kids might read already), hoping that they will episodes during the World Cup but we don't know yet so here's hoping. Any other kids football podcast recommendations would be AWESOME btw!
- Also just bought a new football to kick around in the local field after school with him if my knees can hold out 🤣
Any other ideas for keeping the younglings spirits up would be super welcome!
How's everyone else surviving this one with little kids? Are we all just quietly accepting we'll never complete the album and doing swaps in the playground like it's 1990?
And has anyone cracked letting a six year old stay up for a 9pm kickoff without paying for it the next morning?
philonik@reddit
My dad used to buy the album and an entire box of packs from the local new agent. We used to sit there over a few evenings ripping packs together and sorting them out into piles. Come Monday he would send me to school with a folded up piece of paper containing a list of numbers of the stickers we needed and a wad of duplicates I could swap. Each night when he'd come home from work we'd run through the ones I managed to get that day and update the list.
Not once did we finish the album but it's a core memory I'll never forget.
jmach125@reddit
But a load of second class stamps and get your collection/swaps on Sticker Manager. Should save you a fortune.
Mr_Venom@reddit
⚽👨🚀🔫👨🚀
Always has been.
petemorley@reddit
Do kids not swap their duplicates at school any more?
MattOG81@reddit
Yeah I'm confused. When did sticker albums become a solo venture?
brum_newbie@reddit
Was at a school swap day I remember a kid begging me for my Zico sticker in 1982 world cup 😂
MindHead78@reddit
Got.....got......need.......got.......
ne6c@reddit
This was the best part of the whole experience for me. Everyone going to Tesco, getting a few packs, ripping them and then immediately trading among friends.
I remember there was also a post address where you could send money and what missing stickers you still had, up to 10 stickers, to fill the album.
Jetstream-Sam@reddit
I never would have finished one if it weren't for that letter service. Do they still do that? I'm guessing not, it's probably more engineered nowadays to ensure there's a bunch of stickers that count as ultra rare and only end up all being sent to somewhere in the outer Hebrides.
I traded my completed book to a kid in my class for all his pokemon cards. If my mum hadn't gone through her maddening ebay phase in the late 2000s where she wasted massive amounts of time and money "earning" money by selling everyone elses stuff (Herself and her favourite son excluded, of course, whereas I even lost a book I was halfway through reading because I went to the bathroom mid meal and she grabbed it) If she hadn't sold all those cards for a penny each, I'd have a fortune today. I had the vague knowledge that older things were more valuable so I said I'll have your oldest cards, and he gave me cards from the original set, that were presumably his brothers. There were like five charizards at least.
_Cridders_@reddit
Swapsies
_Cridders_@reddit
I wonder if the same conversion rate applies, in my school the longer stickers that made up half of a picture were worth two, a shiny worth three
Nice_Back_9977@reddit
Need got got need need got
TimarTwo@reddit
Never start him on 'Magic the Gathering' or other such hobbies then 😉 Never completed my albums (Panini) from decades ago - didn't realise it was still going!
velvevore@reddit
I remember my dad buying me 20 packs of stickers at once for 6p each. That was in 1982, I believe.
I was extremely pleased and I did not finish the album.
TimarTwo@reddit
My brother and I were into them in the early 80's. Only reason I collected them was all my mates were collecting them (never been a big football fan). Never finished an album, not sure any of my mates did and can't remember at all how much the packs cost. If it was 6p I probably bought a pack or two a week with pocket money,
AllThatIHaveDone@reddit
Pretty much. A 6 year old might say they want a filled album, but for them the pleasure is generally in opening the card packs. They'll forget all about it by the time they realise they'll never complete it.
kobestarr@reddit (OP)
I was thinking that I think one of the things I was trying to avoid was him feeling left out with his friends
MrsMiggins2@reddit
Buy him a couple of packs during the World Cup, then have a look for bargains on Vinted and ebay once it's all over. Teach him about swapping and reach out to the class WhatsApp group in case other parents want to get their kids involved in a swap meet after school. I bet a bunch of dads will be in a similar position and want to fill their albums too.
LFCRedAnt@reddit
Yeah this is the way,re introduce what it's all about rather than a goal of just filling it. Was a social thing growing up and it was ok not to fill it but seek out people who play and see if they have what you don't and vice versa
Scottish_squirrel@reddit
First mistake. Kids can feel left out. Now other parents will be in the boat of little kobestarr jnr has filled the book. Squirrel jnr has to as well.
LFCRedAnt@reddit
When everybody decided it needed to be filled rather than just buy for the hobby of it. I've never filled one in my life I just enjoy opening packs of stickers and seeing what I get. It's why casually collecting something is expensive nowadays,Pokémon cards when I was growing up was a kids card game,nowadays it's a money spinner so people with a fuck ton of money just scalp all the shelves. Pisses me right off
Overall-Lynx917@reddit
It's the same with the "Build a Model Car/Ship/Aircraft" weekly magazines.
Yes, you get the first week for 99p but to build the model Spitfire (or whatever) costs £1750.
Rob_Cake@reddit
Just buy an old subbuteo set and play that every year.
kobestarr@reddit (OP)
Oh that's a good idea actually. Thanks. Can you not buy new Subbuteo sets? Are they dead now? It's just the way you wrote it that makes me think
Rob_Cake@reddit
Ah sorry, you can buy new for sure! Was just purely if you wanted to save money and get one of ebay. They're a bargain either way, hours of entertainment
accordionshoes@reddit
there was a thing about 7-8 years ago on a game show where they were talking about football sticker albums and it was mentioned that average cost to fill one of the world cup albums was about £850 so, from them, an increase up to a grand isn't unreasonable
bmwkag1407@reddit
My wife is a primary teacher. The WHOLE point is to swap and make friends/bond/work out social arrangements etc...Her previous school was private with several billionaire/millionaire kids. She would explain to the parents, it's not buying 000's of packs, (which they could obs have done) but letting the kids have fun and find their own way.
AirSorvete@reddit
God when I was in primary (the early to mid 2000's) we had trading cards and stickers banned because it could encourage fighting apparently.
Zentrutora@reddit
The collectors box of packets is £200 and most reports are very few duplicates - I'm making my way through one now. Still expensive but not as bad as it could be
Legitimate_War_397@reddit
Encourage him to swap stickers with his friends/anyone you may know. In the same predicament with 4 other colleagues at work so we are trading the duplicate stickers we have with each other.
ARobertNotABob@reddit
It's been a carefully controlled scam since at least the 90s, same with those "build a Spitfire in 100 weeks" magazines.
kobestarr@reddit (OP)
I understand that those ones often just stop selling after like four editions anyways. You can never actually make it
ARobertNotABob@reddit
Sometimes, if they don't sell enough of the first half-dozen in a series, yes, they greatly reduce the print runs to save costs ... but not stop, because that's blatantly a con.
ZaharaWiggum@reddit
During the 2014 World Cup, Newsround or BBC sport had a short daily programme called Goals on Toast. I played it in my classroom during snack time. Hopefully there will be something similar this year.
kobestarr@reddit (OP)
It'll be fun if there is although it sounds like that was twelve years ago!!!
ZaharaWiggum@reddit
Similar time zones though
_Cridders_@reddit
This is why I hate Niall Quinn.
I went to some swap shop event in London when I was about seven, to complete my 1993 Merlin stickerbook. It was all pretty rushed as there were so many kids there, and I was a pretty shy kid too, but when I saw I received a Niall Quinn I was certain I already had it, in fact that wad one of the ones I had most of I thought. Got home and confirmed my fears, and ended up with a sticker book with just one missing. Have never even liked football since.
Fuck Niall Quinn.
Rob_Cake@reddit
Will Wheaton is my enemy. Similar kinda experience.
ARobertNotABob@reddit
Found Sheldon.
kobestarr@reddit (OP)
I hope he reads this and can't sleep at night anymore 🤣
_Cridders_@reddit
I think he owes me a sticker, at very least.
spaceshipcommander@reddit
It will cost you way more than a grand. It's not equal odds of getting each sticker.
It might cost you a grand to get to 60%, for example, but the cost of completing the book becomes exponentially more expensive as you fill up the more common stickers.
It's bordering on a scam when you consider they are now selling boxes with certain nationalities etc. in them. That tells you the packs aren't random and they are manipulating the contents. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they manipulate the contents based on country too. No doubt that we get less English players, the French get less French etc.
An interesting experiment would be to buy a load of packs abroad and see what the ratio of English players is like compared to ours.
WheresWalldough@reddit
The expected cost is £1300, which is not far off what OP says.
It would cost far less than £1000 to get to 60%.
You can also just buy any card for 36p (double the random cost). They cap this at 50 cards, which reduces the expected cost to £535.
You can get around this using 10 addresses (lol). This would reduce the expected cost to £297.50
Alternatively you can just swap with others - the cost of 980 stickers is £175, so theoretically you can fill the album for about that.
Obviously in practice that wouldn't be possible, and £200 is a stupid amount for a sticker album. But I don't think you can call it a scam.
FallenBlade@reddit
Buy a couple of big boxes online and give your kid a packet every now and then.
Then swap through sticker swapping sites. Me and my kids completed the last euros album for about £120.
da316@reddit
I never even considered filling a sticker album when I was a kid. The child sanctioned gambling of opening packs was where it was at
Low_Ad_5255@reddit
I don't use Facebook anymore but when I was collecting the Jurassic World stickers for my son there were Facebook groups for buying and swapping stickers, I'm sure you'll find some of those for the footy stickers if you have a look.
Remote-Pool7787@reddit
Bulk buy the trade packs online, like the newsagents do. Give your kid an individual pack as a reward every time they do something good. I do this with pokemon cards
Feisty-Access3434@reddit
I'm sure back in the late 70s, a Merlin sticker pack was 5p and you got 6 stickers per pack? Like many on here, I never completed an album.
Warm-Reference-4965@reddit
Definitely designed to be swapsies with other people. Also if you are down to the last few needed you can generally buy them individually on Ebay. I know some people will frown on Ebay sellers profiting from this but buying one or two needed cards for a couple of quid versus buying random packs in the hope and it's a no brainer! You could also sell your own unwanted ones on eBay.
evijguano@reddit
We used to draw our own missing ones.
kobestarr@reddit (OP)
oh wow!
NecessaryTraining508@reddit
Complete the M&S sticker book instead? There are significantly fewer stickers and we've had very few doubles so far (plus my mum is always dropping at least £20 at M&S so we've got a constant supply of stickers).
NecessaryTraining508@reddit
Also, a saw a Panini swap event at The Entertainer yesterday - perhaps there's one in your area? It looked like a lot of fun.
Glozboy@reddit
It's a shame Merlin aren't around. They were vastly superior to Panini.
AdhesivenessLost151@reddit
Panini stickers have always been expensive because you buy the packs blind. I speak as someone with an incomplete Mexico 86 one upstairs somewhere. And one from 2014 my kid never completed.
kobestarr@reddit (OP)
There's always that urban legend that a completed sticker book is worth a lot of money. I don't think that's true is it?
Inside-Definition-42@reddit
Rumour started by Panini! 😂
iamsolarflare71@reddit
My first album was in 1977….did them til probably 86? ….. never once did I complete an album 🤣
shoddygorgon@reddit
I remember a pack being 25p, which was exactly one quarter of my lunch money. Used to buy two packets every morning and pay my mate 50p for the sandwiches from his packed lunch.
kobestarr@reddit (OP)
That kind of entrepreneurial spirit. I trust you're a millionaire by now?
upadownpipe@reddit
It was never meant to be something that you pay to complete. There's a whole market in Swapsies where kids inadvertently learn the principles of supply and demand!!
Also Fifa pushed hard for rarity items that Panini pushed back on. So at least they had some sort of backbone. Though there are far too many stickers in the book.
In 4 years time they're going with Topps so it will be worse
jolittletime@reddit
Isnt this the last year of the panini stickers? Sure I saw they were being discontinued after this.
JuniorToe3327@reddit
Was always a luxury and over priced. I definitely have never filled a complete book. Even in my adult life when I occasionally get into it for nostalgia I get bored and forget
Dazz316@reddit
It's ridiculous and I'm avoiding it tbh. My kids been off collecting cards for a while. we had 5 books from years and/competitions from English, Scottish and Euros. He opens them, sometimes gets excited, files them away and then ignores them. Then he stops filing them away, leaving them around the house.
He's been told if this happens again, that we'll stop buying them. Truth be told I want to avoid buying them at all.
Lopsided_Snower@reddit
I just did some research and you're right. Doing the same in 1990 cost around £187.50, that's adjusted taking inflation in to account. Capitalism, yey
WhiteDiamondK@reddit
It’s always been that way.
Like those “build an airplane” magazine series that used to launch after Christmas every year…. Would cost hundreds of of pounds to build that cheap model. That’s why the publishers do this - very lucrative.
Like Lego, an easy way to get grown men to waste their money on something useless.
Tim-Sanchez@reddit
It's always been expensive. Also, you don't fill it at random. Part of the fun is swapping with other people to fill it in! I'm pretty sure Panini let you buy specific stickers as well so you don't need to buy 100 packs to get your final 5 stickers.
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