The 2 billion-print, $2-pack last hurrah for a World Cup legend: the Panini sticker album’s last ride

Adam Martin remembers taking boxes of Panini stickers and their accompanying World Cup albums to a Formula 1 race in May, shortly after his collectibles shop had received a shipment and long before the tournament was to begin. The idea was to give them to friends with kids. But what happened next surprised him. “When I walked in with this box of cards,” Martin recalled, “hundreds of people of all creeds and cultures said something: ‘Where did you get those? How can I get some?’ Those Panini stickers are just that iconic collectible that goes beyond sports collectors.” The stickers depicting players and teams in the World Cup have been around since 1970, when four Italian brothers paid $1,000 to procure the rights to produce the images. More than 50 years later, the stickers are available in packs all over the world, and fans young and old not only purchase them but also swap among themselves, helping each other fill their keepsake albums. This year’s book is the largest ever, partly due to an enlarged 48-team tournament, with 980 distinct stickers. They’ve become such a hot commodity that many stores are sold out, and backorders may not ship until the tournament has crowned a champion. “We’ve sold an unbelievable amount of the stickers,” said Martin, one of the owners of Dave and Adam’s Card World, which has shops in New York and Europe. “We thought the order we placed months ago would be enough to tide us over,” Martin said. “We’ve had to reorder twice.” The building buzz for a World Cup tradition Panini had produced more than 2 billion packs — each containing seven stickers — by the start of the tournament, said Jason Howarth, the senior vice president of marketing and athlete relations for Panini America. That’s quite a feat considering the field wasn’t set until April 1. Most stickers are not valuable by themselves, though older ones — such as the debuts of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — can fetch hundreds of dolla