Panini World Cup 2022 sticker book – how to save money completing the collection

It’s a beloved tradition: the Panini World Cup sticker album. It has been a staple of the tournament since 1970 when it was first produced, and it has only grown in popularity since then.

But now it seems harder to complete than ever, and not because of difficulty getting the stickers, but whether many collectors have the financial means to do so.

With 670 stickers to collect, football finance expert Kieran Maguire thinks completing the album could cost you money a whopping £883.80 This time.

That certainly isn’t cheap for many collectors, young and old, and that’s before you factor in the global cost of living crisis and the rather ill-timed World Cup, with the final in Qatar just a week before Christmas Day.

A little festive gift for the mother-in-law or another dozen packets or so to get one step closer to filling your album? We’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that, but the underlying point is that collecting Panini stickers this winter could be harder than ever.

Another blow to collectors, especially in the UK, is that the price for a pack of five random stickers has risen from 80 cents for the 2018 World Cup to 90 cents for this year’s edition.

Many will view the price hike as unnecessary, especially in light of people trying to tighten their belts this winter, but Panini insists they had little choice but to increase costs.

The company told Sports post: ‘Like all companies, we managed inflationary pressures as best we could with higher material, energy and transport costs.

“We’ve made sure we have a wide distribution in retail of SKUs such as multipacks and ecoblisters that offer a slightly lower price per pack than buying them individually.”

This indicates that the Panini album can be completed more cheaply than the amount approaching the daunting £1,000. The two questions here are “how many” and, even more simply, “how?”

Avid collectors will disagree on how to complete a collection by enjoying, but we’re going to focus entirely on the financial benefits here.

The obvious route is to buy Panini’s 140 box of stickers, enough to fill an album. Order early enough when the album comes out and you can complete your set very easily. Loose stickers coming from there would only cost around 28 cents at Panini, meaning you could very easily complete the album for under £150.

That is of course not useful if you are reading this now, because they have been sold out for a long time. Your next best option is to buy a starter pack for around £5 – all newsagents probably have some in stock. They contain an album of 31 stickers with five packs and six individual stickers in the album.

From there, buy the stickers in bulk as big as you can. Many newsagents sell the boxes in elements of 100 packs at a time for £90 and while you will still get double that will significantly reduce the speed at which you get them compared to randomly buying a few packs at a time.

You can also order the boxes from the Panini store, which are still available at the time of writing. It’s a big financial outlay up front, but MUCH cheaper in the long run. You’ll need two to three of these boxes, depending on how successful you are at forgoing your doubles…

…ah the double. ‘Got, got, need’ and all that. Having friends to trade with is the best way to cut costs and also the more fun way to complete your collection.

If you don’t have anyone to trade with, all is not lost. There are options online that specialize in trading doubles, but Panini also plans to offer their own service this winter.

Panini is actively encouraging you to get involved in trading your doubles and has revealed that they plan to support events for this in the very near future.

“We are working with a number of retailers and centers to support them in running swap shops in the UK and Ireland,” Panini also told us.

“For example, GOALS football centers will be running swap shops in some of their locations during the half term, the National Football Museum will have some swap events and we have some great activations with select retailers. We recommend collectors to keep an eye on our social media pages for more details.’

Eventually you will reach a point where you only need 50 stickers or less to complete the collection. From here you can continue to trade or simply send in for the remaining stickers you need through Panini’s single sticker service.

If you use a discount code that’s on the first page of your album, you’re also entitled to a 10 percent discount on your order, whether it’s that elusive missing sticker referring to you or the full 50. It can be 28 cents per sticker but it guarantees completion and prevents mindless opening of packs and creating a double stack as high as the World Cup trophy itself.

Depending on whether you can get rid of your doubles, you can even complete your album today for anything from £185 to £290 if you buy two or three boxes of 100 packs. Granted, it’s still not cheap, but it’s certainly a huge savings compared to buying packs and hoping for the best.

If you’re really looking for a bargain, you can buy the bare minimum of 134 packs for 90 cents each. However, if you manage to trade each double for just £120, this can be very difficult in practice.

You may also be wondering at this point about theories that Panini is withholding certain stickers to create an artificial economy with certain stickers over others. This can usually happen if you’re still missing stickers and still have about seven copies of another.

However, Panini maintains that this was not the case when presented to them, claiming that all the stickers were created and distributed evenly.

‘Absolutely not! All the stickers that go into the album are printed in equal amounts,’ they said.’

“What usually happens is that collectors will prefer certain stickers over others and hold them back, or they will force a higher ‘exchange value’.

“We’ve seen this happen with players like the team or high value players like Ronaldo or Messi.”

The tournament may only be a month away and Christmas may be getting closer, but even as the world prepares to tighten its belts this winter to face rising prices on all fronts, huge savings can still be made to cover the traditional and still beloved world. Cup sticker book.