But Paul Harper calculates that swapping duplicates with friends will reduce cost to about £250

A maths professor from Cardiff has calculated that filling this year’s World Cup sticker book will cost collectors £773.60. Prof Paul Harper has devised a formula that suggests, given the probabilities of getting duplicate stickers, on average an individual would need to buy 967 packets or 4,832 stickers to get the set.

As well as pictures of the 32 squads of players competing in Russia this summer, there are special stickers for national badges, team group shots and host city posters, making a total of 682 stickers needed to fill the book.



One hundred and 37 packets of stickers costing £109.60 would be enough to complete the collection, providing you didn’t get any doubles. However, anybody who has ever collected World Cup stickers will know that this is an unlikely scenario.



Harper also calculated how swapping duplicate stickers could reduce the cost. He believes that with 10 friends working together and swapping their doubles, the cost reduces to about £250 each.

The Panini sticker factory – in pictures Read more

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Workers sort stickers into piles at the Panini factory outside São Paolo for the 2014 World Cup collection. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

Panini has contested the validity of the claim, saying that the calculation “assumes that the collector is in a bubble with no one to swap with or no access to the internet to send off to our missing stickers service”. Collectors are able to purchase 50 specific stickers at a price of 22p each direct from Panini.

Many collectors of the sticker book have been critical of the price rise in this year’s stickers. Packets of five stickers are on sale for 80p, a increase on the 50p charged for the previous World Cup and Euro 2016 collections. Harper’s figures suggest the price rise has nearly doubled the cost of completing the collection compared with the Euro 2016 book two years ago.



Harper told the BBC: “Filling an album has become progressively more expensive over the years since then, not just because there are typically more teams competing now, but because Panini has become more creative about allocating spaces.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brazil, the 1970 World Cup winners, as they appeared in the Panini sticker album. Photograph: Panini

Panini first produced a World Cup sticker book for the 1970 Mexico edition, which contained a combination of 288 stickers and cards.

The tradition of swapping duplicate stickers was a playground fixture during the 1970s and 1980s. The company has adopted #GotGotNeed as their marketing hashtag, based on the phrases uttered while going through a pile of somebody else’s swapsies.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The 1982 England World Cup squad as they appeared in the Panini sticker book. Photograph: Panini

As well as the official World Cup sticker collection, Panini also manufactures World Cup trading cards and special codes on the back of some stickers unlock virtual stickers in a digital version of the album.

Last year, the company produced a sticker collection for the women’s European football championship finals for the first time.