Every world cup brings with it a wave of nostalgia, and for people of a certain age a big part
of that is the beloved Panini sticker album.
But surely the humble sticker has had its day in the digital age.
What better place to start than my old school
to see if that's still the case.
Who here likes football?
OK. And does anybody collect Panini World Cup stickers?
Two of you. OK.
My dad collects them with me.
My dad started collecting them when he was young and he told me about them
which is why I thought it'd be quite a fun thing to do.
I prefer Fifa. I'd rather play Fifa because
you can actually control the player.
I'm a little bit sad that only a handful of
the students are collecting Panini stickers, and those that are seem to be spurred on by
their parents.
Greg Landsdowne, expert collector and author,
has agreed to show me his Panini albums.
OK. There's definitely a smell of something.
I don't know if it's the adhesives.
This is a classic design, this one. That font.
Greg has an impressive collection dating all the way back to 1979.
So I've actually got some swaps with me.
Can we swap?
What did I do. Oh god.
That is not the way to keep your doubles.
As far as I'm concerned. I have a box that I tend to keep them in.
What, like a tupperware?
A very small one, like something you'd put
your business cards in.
In the old days, you used to get a lot of
kids putting big elastic bands around them.
Can you imagine what they were doing to the cards, all curling up.
I'll see what I end up with.
You see, what you really want to aim for is one rip and then you can start pulling them
out, whereas you needed two or three. When you've got a lot of packets to get through,
you really want to be able to rattle through them. But it's still early.
OK.
Greg tipped us off that city workers are big time stickerheads.
We're going to speak to the people that know best, and that's the newsagents.
Are you selling Panini World Cup stickers?
– Yes we do. – I'll take five packets please.
Have you found that they're really popular around here?
They are very popular. I think this has been the best year.
Even though the price has gone up?
Even though the price has gone up, yeah.
Have you ever had instances of someone ... - Buying a whole box? Yeah.
So how many do you think you sell every week?
We've got quite a lot of stock here - roughly
about 30-35 boxes per week.
You sell 35 boxes a week?
At the minute.
And do you think that's just for financial workers?
Especially young city workers in between 25-35.
The newsagents seemed to confirm Greg's theory,
so I'm off to meet a group of city workers who swap in a local pub.
How exactly does it work, who started the idea?
Back in 2002, obviously we talked about how we collected stickers from 1986, 1990,
and we said 'How about we do 2002', and then I think we got the whole office involved.
What part of the process do you think you enjoy the most?
Is it opening the packs?
Oh yeah. Opening the pack and seeing that shiny,
it's like Willy Wonka, like getting a golden ticket.
I skip down the road all the way home.
That feeling that you were talking about,
is it something that you had as a kid?
To be honest, I was actually doubting doing it this year.
I was thinking it's a lot of money, can I go through this.
And then I think it was you Mel who said 'Come on, let's go and buy a pack.'
And that was it. The feeling that came back, just buying them.
- So we bought 20 in one day.
Have you ever been into a newsagents and just bought a box?
No, you're banned from the group if that happens.
We're still trying to treat it like we did at the playground.
I'd like to say we're buying one or two packs, but we are going in and buying about 20 packs
at a time.
So there is a kind of code of honour?
To the point where the woman in Tesco said to me, 'You're buying a lot - your kid must
be very happy with you'. Not for my kid!
Not everyone can afford to buy 20 packs at a time, so some people have come up with creative
solutions to the problem.
So we've come to Oxford today to meet Panini Cheapskates.
They're a couple who basically draw their own World Cup stickers,
and they post pictures of their drawings on social media for charity,
and it's proven really, really popular
So how did Panini Cheapskates come about?
It was the eve of the 2014 World Cup and
we were in the pub with a couple of our friends.
They were doing their sticker swap session, and I was a bit jealous.
There was an article doing the rounds at the time that said it cost about £450 to £500
to complete the album. That's a bit too expensive, and there were
probably more important things we could be spending our money on.
It became this kind of thing - could we fill the album for nothing?
Like zero pounds, zero pence.
And the only way we could think about doing
that was to draw them.
What is it about football stickers that you
think people have an affinity with?
There's a lot of nostalgia, with people who were collecting them as kids.
I think it feels like it's much more popular than it was maybe
ten, fifteen years ago,
but then maybe not as popular as it was in its absolute heyday.
Maybe it's like a cyclical thing and you've got to be enough years removed from when it
was a big deal to reengage with it.
I mean, that's awful. Looks nothing like him.
Sian, why do we bother?
Isn't that the whole point?
I guess so, but I'm pretty embarrassed.
It's not too bad.
Greg has invited me back to his local to learn how a proper swap should be done.
So I've taken your advice, I've got myself a tupperware for my swaps,
rather than an elastic band.
You guys are the experts, what do we start with in this situation?
I've got my list of needs on my app.
I've not had time so I've just got my book.
You've brought your book, which Greg told me wasn't Kosher?
There's no right and wrong way, but if you
ask a bona fide Panini collector they'll probably say it's best to leave it at home.
I don't know if this is the best way of doing it, but I've scribbled down the ones that
I've got. Is that not...
It's going to be a painstaking process, but
we can do it.
How many do you need?
I've got no idea.
I would suggest that we start, because you need loads.
Seven? – No.
Nine? – No.
28? – No.
52?
Shall I hold them, and then you can...
66? – Yes.
We have one. We have success.
Sticker collecting is still alive and well, but it's not quite recreating the playground
experience I remember.
So I'm going in search of the larger swap meets.
There's an official Panini bus travelling
round the UK.
So we've come to this car park in north London.
Hello, are you collecting? – I'm collecting, yeah.
We've got a few stickers that are helping people on their way.
It's a mixture of kids and adults.
– Loads of dad's have done it as children, so
there's loads of second generation people coming, getting more into it than the kids.
I was really dubious about coming here today thinking it was just be children.
I really thought that.
I was pretty confident it would be a load of middle aged men.
Should've left the kids at home.
I've just got the Mexico shiny.
So I've been doing really well on this table.
Everyone here is getting really close so they've got loads of swaps, and I reckon I've probably
got another 30 out of it, in the last ten minutes.
That definitely took me back to my school days. I felt myself getting genuinely carried away.
Next stop is the National Football Museum
in Manchester for my final swap meet.
I started out this film investigating a story
but now all I really want to do is complete my album.
It gives you that nostalgia really.
I remember collecting the 1978 World Cup one,
filling those books, and then the 1979 League book, and then my mum's throwing them away.
What's changed in 40 years?
Nothing, I'm still enjoying it.
Obivously when I was ten I had to wait for one or two packets every week or so, but now
I'm buying loads of packets.
So Hopper has memorised the swaps we need by the pages.
He knows what's in the book already.
So he doesn't look at the numbers at all?
No, he just studies the book almost every day.
There's like 670.
He never looks at the list, I'm the only one doing the paper work.
How do you feel about your kids handling your stickers?
Are you a bit funny about it?
I can't let them stick them in either, they'd be all over the place.
My daughter, who was two at the time, ripped one of the pages on my Euro 2016 album.
Shock and horror was my first reaction.
Why do you think it was all that time passed for 40 years and you didn't do it.
Because I hit 50 this year.
What about you, are you tempted?
I'd rather walk over hot coals.
After visiting my old school I felt that there
was something lost, but now I see it's just a different, maybe wider, demographic keeping
sticker collecting alive.
I'm having a little count, and I actually
did better than I thought I did.
I haven't got enough to finish my album, but I've definitely
got below the 50 mark,
so I can now send off to Panini for the final 50.
If I do that, then I've completed my album.
So it's been a good day.
And I got the super-rare Bobby Firmino.
Panini had to reprint this because they stated
that Liverpool FC was in Brazil. They've reprinted it correctly in England.
And now I get to stick them in.