Thursday 31st January sees the close of the January transfer window in Britain where last minute panic buys and unfounded rumours will dominate the day. But in the 1990s, January was traditionally the month where a very different form of player trading was in full swing. Sticker collecting dominated schoolyards in Britain and Ireland where the most sought after players weren't necessarily the most talented...
Furbies, tamagotchis, pogs and yo-yos, most Irish children who attended primary school in the 1990s dabbled in one if not all of these fads but it was Merlin’s Premier League stickers that ruled the roost. For weeks post Christmas, schoolyards across the country turned into miniature trading areas.
Huge popularity
Got, got, need, got, need were generally the only mutterings heard at this time among the huddles of children that congregated at lunchtime for daily bartering sessions. Market research carried out in the 90s suggested that around 80% of males aged between 7 and 11 owned a Merlin Premier League sticker album, and looking back, in many ways it was a pretty good introduction to the world of economics.
Of course Merlin didn’t print each sticker the same number of times, they couldn’t have, I mean how else could you explain ending up with six Colin Hendrys? But they did set up special trading centres where you could go along with your swaps and exchange them for whatever stickers you still needed.
Unfortunately this only applied if you lived in the UK as the centres didn’t come to Ireland, meaning we had to make do with photos of happy kids completing their album with ease while we opened packet after packet searching for that elusive Ray Parlour mug shot. Little in your childhood could compare to the crushing disappointment of spending your pocket money on a couple of packets of stickers (at 30p a pop you know) only to find you had them all already. And if spending all your pocket money on ‘worthless stickers’ (as adults used to often inform us) wasn’t enough, you could also send off for a colourful ring binder to preserve your pristine album if you happened to be a millionaire and had enough money to finish the book.
The economics of football stickers
Yes, although we didn’t know it, we were learning all about supply and demand. Of course some kids always had way more stickers than others, where one child would have enough money to get two packets a time, others would waltz into the shop and purchase 10. They were the oil barons of the playground and when it came to swapping, they controlled the market.
The most sought after stickers differed every year, but usually the shiny club crest stickers were the most popular, indeed I remember only too well the pain of parting with all my swaps just to attain the crest of my beloved Arsenal. Only one kid had the logo spare and he knew I really wanted it, so the price went up. Primary school kids had first-hand experience of the elasticity of demand long before the Junior Cert cycle.
Pictured: classic Panini football stickers, circa 1990
It wasn’t just Merlin who were in on the act though, Panini were the main players for big international tournaments and for those who grew up in the 80s they were the original sticker company. Summer holidays and the limited availability of stickers meant that Panini World Cup albums never really had the same impact as the Premier League ones although they now enjoy a greater cult status on the internet if only for containing mug shots from the likes of ‘Perm-King’ Carlos Valderrama of Columbia.
Of course today you can go online and purchase a competed album from any season you want off eBay, they’re not exactly collector’s items either with average album selling for about 25 euro. I don’t even think they make the sticker albums anymore, card collecting has taken over instead. But I guess it wouldn’t be a fad if it lasted forever.
