flâneur

The Joyful Pointlessness of World Cup Sticker Books | The New Yorker

newyorker.com · 763 words · saved by 1 readers

For a parent, finding a children’s activity that hasn’t been digitized, optimized, or turned into gambling feels like a balm.

For the past two weeks, my nine-year-old daughter and her friends have been obsessing over Panini’s World Cup sticker books. The tradition, which started in 1970, after a few Italian brothers who ran a newspaper business decided to get into collectible stickers, is very simple: kids get a book with a space for every player in the tournament, and then they buy packs of stickers, each of which has a photo of a player and some basic data: his name, what country he represents, and so on. Unlike modern sports trading cards, which are not only hefty but often bedazzled with autographs, jersey…

saved by

related reading