BySophie Madden

West Midlands

My name is Sophie, I'm a mum, and it's a little after midnight. My partner wants to turn off the light and go to sleep, but I'm still frantically typing on my phone.

Is it work or family problems keeping me up late?

It's neither.

Instead, I'm in the middle of tense negotiations with a man called Jamie who lives in Bromley, almost 180 miles away from my Shropshire home. We are arranging a swap of 50 stickers for my son's 2026 Panini World Cup album.

Filling it has become like a full-time job.

While most people have been finishing work and sitting back to enjoy the group stages of the tournament, I am spending hours verifying our needs and arranging trades. I now fear stepping into the supermarket due to the cost sticker packs are adding to the weekly grocery shop.

Speaking of cost, statisticians have suggested that trying to complete the set at retail alone - accounting for duplicates - will burn a £1,300 hole in your pocket.

That may be spare change if you're on a footballer's wage, but for plenty of households, that's an eye-watering sum and a complete non-starter.

Knowing I cannot spend the equivalent of a family holiday on this mission, we need to look for other means.

The 2026 tournament is the second to bring sticker madness to our home.

In 2022, I made what I now know to be a terrible error by helping my then seven-year-old son complete the Qatar book.

It's meant that failure is not an option.

But things aren't easy. Four years ago, we managed to finish by the opening match. This year, we only got the book in May, and so I felt behind before we even started.

This tournament also has 980 different stickers to collect, compared with 670 for Qatar.

The first step is to create a catalogue of our wants - we're doing all right for Senegal, but our Tunisia page is looking particularly weak.

As an experienced collector, I know the first place to look is social media.

After making a detailed database of our doubles, I join multiple swap groups on Facebook.

I put up a post and messages come in so fast that I've arranged swaps for some of the stickers before I've even been able to read what other people are after.

It is enough to generate seven exchanges and cover more than 200 of our needs.

One man requires only PAN6 - Panamanian right-back Michael Amir Murillo - to complete his book, and offers more than 50 stickers in return for the elusive defender.

Another gentleman who responds to my post notes we have a mutual social media friend and asks whether I'm near Telford.

Having taken all safety precautions - and drilled my son fully on stranger danger - we arrange to meet in the car park of a service station to trade the grand total of 11 stickers. I tell myself this will reduce the cost of the stamps needed to conduct trades by post.

The man's name is Mark and he's collecting with his girlfriend - he organises the trades and she's the one who sticks them in.

Together, he and my son lament the lack of stickers in our local supermarket.

For anyone who wants to swap in person in a more organised way, Panini does arrange public swap events, external, with hundreds attending meet-ups in Coventry, Solihull, Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent among towns and cities across the country.

In a second meeting, postage stamps come up again. A man called Matt tells us that swapping stickers is the first situation in which he's ever had to buy any. He is in his 20s.

The 2026 album also comes with the added challenge of collecting 12 stickers that are only available on the inside label of promotional bottles of Coca Cola.

I've heard of some desperate hunters inspecting bottles in their local shop. They peel back the Coke label, check what's there before they buy, and re-stick the label as they approach the register so their money isn't wasted by landing a fifth Raúl Jiménez.

To increase our odds, everyone in my BBC newsroom has been giving me their Coke wrappers. It becomes the first page we complete.

My son now has no need for anything as frivolous as cash. He only deals in stickers, and a pack becomes what he earns for chores around the house, instead of pocket money.

After pulling a tendon in his thumb while goalkeeping, he doesn't ask for pain relief. The only thing he requests is a tin of 112 players with adhesive backings.

My hope now is that the value of the completed books will grow and may one day pay for my son's first car.

After completing the 2022 book, the top request on his Christmas list that year was a hotel-style safe for his room. Our investment is now secure inside it.

So, how are we getting on this time as the third phase of group stage matches continues?

A little over six weeks since our quest began, we're still a little over 100 stickers short of completion, but I'm still waiting for a delivery from Paul in Llandudno.

So if you need ENG10, I'll trade you for a NOR15.

Get in touch

See Also