There was a news story doing the rounds at the time of the 2022 World Cup about how it is likely to cost £883 to complete the World Cup 2022 sticker book. But this estimate assumes no swapping of duplicates which is an essential part of the process of filling the sticker book.
I’ve just completed the Tour de France 2022 Panini sticker book with my sons. We had three stages: 1. Buying loads of stickers; 2. Swapping with others; and 3. Buying last few stickers directly from Panini.
Swapping the Tour de France stickers was difficult because we didn’t know anyone who was swapping the stickers – it’s a niche pursuit in the UK. I had to track down other collectors on social media and negotiate swaps, and trust that they would send me stickers in return for those I sent them. All of them did as agreed.
Now that we have finished the stickerbook, I know that we overbought stickers by 36%. I reckon that we could have completed with fewer stickers than that, but let’s use that as an assumption.
So, with the World Cup book having 670 stickers at 18p per sticker with 36% overbuying, that is a maximum cost of £164.02 to fill the book.
Happy collecting!