Stick It to ’Em This World Cup hobby transcends generations, borders. BY KELLY DEARMORE A merican sports fans are well-acquainted with traditional baseball or football trading cards, but when it comes to the World Cup, the international soccer community has for generations enjoyed a different spin on a similar hobby: the Panini FIFA World Cup sticker album. Since 1970, these stickers have provided fans from around the globe a fun, colorful connection to the tourna- ment. Since the World Cup has only been in America once prior to this year, some casual American soccer fans might not be familiar with the World Cup stickers, even though Panini’s North American operations are based in Irving. Unlike the carefully protected and increasingly expen- sive sports cards of today, these World Cup stickers are designed to be put into action by being peeled and placed into a corresponding album. The goal for this particular type of sticker collector is to fill every blank spot in the book. The packets are far more affordable than most sports card packs these days and will be widely available in grocery and department stores as the tournament kicks off. A standard collection features a mix of stadium, mascot, team and individual player stick- ers, along with shiny foil or holographic inserts. Panini introduced its first official FIFA World Cup sticker collection for the 1970 tournament in Mexico. Over the years, as the tournament expanded, so did the albums. That origi- nal album featured 52 pages and 271 stickers. By the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the album had grown to 80 pages and required 670 stickers to complete. Since the beginning to now, Panini says it has published 7,705 stickers across its FIFA World Cup collections. A quick look at Ebay shows that vintage albums from the 1970s are being sold for more than $1,000. Panini says the 2014 col- lection, commemorating the Brazil World Cup, is the best-selling collection of all-time, something they credit, at least in part, to a new sticker and album design that year. Panini says it will distribute 10 million albums to retailers of all kinds across the globe this year. While new single stickers are relatively easy to find, stickers from previous years can be difficult to track down, since most were permanently affixed into albums. The albums themselves have also become sought-after collectibles over the years. Thanks to there being three host countries in 2026, to cele- brate the host region, Panini America will release different al- bum designs, with one featuring a Canada-United States cover, and a separate version dedicated to Mexico. Another new element to this year’s collection will be what the com- pany describes as “online-exclusive foil parallels” with names including “Gold Flood Crumple,” “Purple Crumple” or the in- credibly rare “Black 1-of-1”. Whether you are a lifelong soccer fan or a newcomer to the sport, opening a pack of these stickers offers a uniquely en- gaging, hands-on way to experience the fun of the World Cup. 44 DALLAS OBSERVER • QUEST FOR THE CUP
