The Law of Diminishing Returns is in full effect when opening packs of stickers. The first box is always fun because you need every sticker. The second box is also fun because you will need most of the stickers. Any box after that is will most likely be mostly doubles, with a few needed stickers mixed in. And that was pretty much the case with my third box of 2022-23 Topps Hockey Stickers. While most of it was doubles of stickers I got in my prior two boxes, I still got a lot of new stickers towards my set.
Here’s my breakdown of my third and final box of 2022-23 Topps Hockey Stickers.
What I Got in My 3rd Box
200 regular stickers. None were doubles of each other.
50 foil stickers; 1 was a double of another sticker in this box.
That’s 249 unique stickers in my box, with one foil sticker being a double. No stickers were missing and there were no quality control issues.
Breakdowns by 100s
Because I’m a nerd — and I have to sort these stickers anyway — here is the breakdown by 100s of the stickers in my third box.
1-99
30 regular stickers
5 foil stickers
= 35 stickers / 14% of the box
100-199
28 regular stickers
12 foil stickers
= 40 stickers / 16% of the box
200-299
30 regular stickers
3 foil stickers
= 33 stickers / 13.2% of the box
300-399
28 paper stickers
7 foil stickers
= 35 stickers / 14% of the box
400-499
28 paper stickers
13 foil stickers
= 41 stickers / 16.4% of the box
500-599
30 paper stickers
8 foil sticker
= 38 stickers / 15.2% of the box
600-679
26 paper stickers
2 foil stickers
= 28 stickers / 11.2% of the box
Once again, a pretty even mix of stickers, with each grouping of 100 between 11% and 16%.
So, What Stickers Did I Actually Need?
Out of 249 unique stickers – remember, one of the foil stickers was a double — I needed 62 paper stickers and 24 foil stickers for my set. The other 138 paper stickers and 26 foil stickers were duplicates of what was pulled in my prior two boxes. Overall, this third box yielded me 86 stickers towards my set and 164 doubles of what I got in my first and second boxes.
Granted, 86 “needed” stickers means that 34% of the stickers in my third box were what I could use, while the other 66% were doubles. I still think that is a pretty good success rate. Plus, I got some extra stickers of players that I like and/or collect, as well as a pile of doubles to trade.
And I will have to do some trading, as I have 519 out of 679 stickers — meaning I need 160 stickers to finish my set. After three boxes, I am 76% towards building the 2022-23 Topps Hockey Sticker set.
If you like hockey stickers, then the 2022-23 Topps Hockey Sticker set is a worth collecting. There are a nice variety of stickers and, at 679 stickers, the set dwarfs most hockey card sets available today. It isn’t necessarily a cheap set to put together, but it is still much easier to assemble than most hockey card sets.
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