Every year, I usually purchase three or four boxes of Topps Hockey Stickers for the difficult-but-not-impossible task of completing the annual sticker album. This year’s sticker collection has 679 stickers: 539 regular stickers and 140 shiny “foil” stickers are needed to complete the album. Stickers measure 1-7/8″ wide by 2-5/8″ tall.
A few weeks prior to my birthday, my sister asked me what I wanted. I sent her a link to an online retailer who was selling boxes of 2022-23 Topps Hockey Stickers for about $38 per box. I asked for three boxes — asking for four seemed greedy — as well as two sticker albums. And before you ask, yes, it is because I put stickers in one album but still want to have an empty, “mint” album. Weird, I know, but what do you expect from a guy who blogs about hockey cards and collectibles?
A box of 2022-23 Topps Hockey Stickers has 50 packs, with each pack containing five stickers — four regular “paper” stickers and one shiny “foil” sticker. This year, the stickers have soft paper backings instead of the hard backings of the prior three years, which made the stickers seem more like little trading cards. Also, the wrappers are not like trading card wrappers that are “crimped” shut at the top and bottom edges. This year, the wrappers are two pieces of paper glued together, just like the way Panini stickers were. No idea why Topps made these changes, but my guess is that it was to cut down on production costs.
The three boxes that I was gifted — thanks, sis! — would put me at 750 stickers. I know that many of those will be doubles, so there will be some trading involved.
And that’s another thing that makes collecting Topps Hockey Stickers so challenging: you can’t just buy the last few stickers you need from Topps. When Panini was producing an annual hockey sticker album from the late 1980s to the late 2010s, you could purchase the last few stickers that you needed directly from them. It wasn’t cost-efficient for buying a whole set, but if you needed 30 stickers or less, it was a worthwhile option. With Topps, you have to trade with other collectors, keep buying packs, or overpay on eBay, to finish your album.
No one said collecting was easy. Or cheap.
Anyway, let’s see what the breakdown was like for my first box of 2022-23 Topps Hockey Stickers.
What I Got in My 1st Box
200 regular stickers; none were doubles of each other.
50 foil stickers; none were doubles of each other.
So, that’s 250 unique stickers in my box, without any of them being duplicates of each other.
Breakdowns by 100s
Since I have to sort these stickers anyway — and I’m a nerd for this kind of stuff — here’s a look at how many stickers I got in each grouping of 100. I’m not sure if anyone else finds this information useful, but here it is:
1-99
29 regular stickers
5 foil stickers
= 34 stickers / 13.6% of the box
100-199
26 regular stickers
10 foil stickers
= 36 stickers / 14.4% of the box
200-299
28 regular stickers
11 foil stickers
= 39 stickers / 15.6% of the box
300-399
30 paper stickers
12 foil stickers
= 42 stickers / 16.8% of the box
400-499
27 paper stickers
9 foil stickers
= 36 stickers / 14.4% of the box
500-599
33 paper stickers
1 foil sticker
= 34 stickers / 13.6% of the box
600-679
27 paper stickers
2 foil stickers
= 29 stickers / 11.6% of the box
As you can tell from the numbers above, I got a pretty even distribution of stickers within each grouping of 100.
After one box, I have 250 out of 679 stickers, or about 36.8% of the set. Of course, I will get doubles in my next box, but after my first box I’m off to a great start.
My first box of 2022-23 Topps Hockey Stickers gets a five-puck rating because the collation was great — no doubles! — and there were zero quality control issues. I’ll have my next box break posted tomorrow. In the meantime, leave a comment if you are collecting 2022-23 Topps Hockey Stickers, and how your experience has been thus far with trying to put the set together.
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I like to get stickers each year as well. I have a legacy of 10 years of unfinished books because I stop buying at 4 – 5 boxes and still I usually have over 100 stickers to go after that. It is disappointing but I find it relaxing to fill up the books over the weeks each year. The doubles happen after the first box and, believe me, there are tons of them after opening 4 – 5 boxes. I look forward to giving it a go this year. Thanks for the reports.
Thanks for reading, John, and the comment. Let me know if you ever want to trade.