Ah, those were the days, the 1990 World Cup. You scraped together your pocket money for a new bag of Panini pictures. How great the joy was when a German player with a mustache and mullet was among the collection cards. Or maybe the picture of the World Cup trophy itself, gold on a silver background, to stick on the front page. Or exchange: A Klinsmann against almost the entire Romanian team. And then wait until the next pocket money.
Anyone who talks to people about Panini scrapbooks hears nostalgia for a time when, fortunately, it was enough to stick one print product inside another print product. Many remember their first time: World Cup 1978. Or 1986 in Mexico. To the schoolyard exchange market. Saving money or begging grandma in order to order the last missing pictures from Panini at the end. It’s different today. Today you have to save a lot of pocket money to fill a scrapbook. To be more precise: a good 1000 euros.
Inflation also hit the Panini album, which has accompanied every World Cup with stickers since 1970. A bag of five cards costs one euro this year. At the World Cup in Russia four years ago it was only 90 cents, at the EM 2016 only 70 cents.
There are a total of 670 cards for the World Cup in Qatar, showing the 32 teams and 50 special motifs, such as the stadiums. So if you were extremely lucky – the probability tends towards zero – and never got a card that you already have, you would only have to buy 135 bags and thus spend 135 euros.
How many sachets you really need is a mathematical question that the probability theory answers, like Paul Harpers from the British Cardiff University has already calculated for the past World Cup. “The first sticker you buy is absolutely guaranteed not to be a duplicate,” explained the mathematics professor. From the second card, the probability drops, first to 669/670, i.e. 99.85 percent, then to 668/670, i.e. 99.7 percent, and so on. The probability of getting a card that you don’t already have decreases so rapidly that if you’re only 19 cards short, you’re still a good halfway through buying the bag. If you only need one sticker to complete your album, you have a 669:1 chance of getting stickers you already have.
Result: Mathematically, you would have to buy around 5000 tickets to get all 670 copies. That amounts to around 1000 euros, which hardly anyone who receives pocket money can afford. According to research by the British newspaper, an average construction worker in Qatar who helped build the football stadiums for the cheap wages that are customary there Guardians working almost 2000 hours for it.
For comparison: According to Harper, filling a Panini album completely in 2016 only cost 522.90 euros. Fortunately, collectors who dare to buy a Panini book despite inflation do not have to buy all the stickers themselves. Barter transactions, whether in the schoolyard or on the internet, are normal. A possibility that is denied when shopping in the supermarket or when paying the gas bill.