I love opening packs of stickers – and hate sorting them. But writing these blog posts about what I get in my boxes of 2024-25 Topps Hockey Stickers has motivated me to sort these in a hurry so I can write about them. Plus, it’s more fun to complete a set while the season is still going on, instead of over the summer or even years later, like I’ve done with other sets. Heck, it took me 17 years to complete my 1990-91 Panini Hockey Sticker set.
Anyway, a box of 2024-25 Topps Hockey Stickers has 50 packs. Each pack has 4 regular (paper) stickers and one shiny foil sticker. Let’s see what was inside my third box of this year’s Topps NHL stickers.
What I Got in My 3rd Box
My box contained a total of 250 stickers. Like the first two boxes I opened, there were no quality control issues. No stickers were damaged or missing.
198 Regular Stickers
Each pack of stickers has four regular (paper, non-foil) stickers, unless the pack has a parallel; then it only has three regular stickers. Out of the 198 regular stickers I got in my third box, none were doubles of each other.
50 Foil (Insert) Stickers
Every pack has one foil sticker. All 50 of my foil stickers were unique; that is, no doubles in the box. However, I did get some duplicates from prior boxes. More on that later.
2 Blue Parallel Stickers
My box also had two Blue Foil Parallel stickers that were serial-numbered out of 100: Dylan Larkin and Logan Cooley. As I said before, the idea of getting serial-numbered parallels in packs of stickers makes building this year’s set more fun.
Breakdowns by 100s
Since I have to sort these to figure out if I need them for my set, I figured it would be fun to show how many stickers I got in each grouping of 100.
Stickers 1-100
22 regular stickers
4 foil stickers
= 26 stickers / 10.4% of the box
Stickers 101-200
24 regular stickers
5 foil stickers
= 29 stickers / 11.6% of the box
Stickers 201-300
27 regular stickers
5 foil stickers
= 32 stickers / 12.8% of the box
Stickers 301-400
25 regular stickers
7 foil stickers
= 32 stickers / 12.8% of the box
Stickers 401-500
28 regular stickers
6 foil stickers
= 34 stickers / 13.6% of the box
Stickers 501-600
16 regular stickers
11 foil stickers
= 27 stickers / 10.8% of the box
Stickers 601-700
28 regular stickers
8 foil stickers
= 36 stickers / 14.4% of the box
Stickers 701-800
28 regular stickers
4 foil stickers
= 28 stickers / 12.8% of the box
Again, I got a pretty even distribution within each grouping of 100.
Progress on My Set
I knew my luck wasn’t going to last forever. I got 18 regular stickers that were doubles of stickers I got in my first two boxes and – deep breath – 46 doubles of foil stickers from my prior boxes. Ouch! While this box gave me 180 more regular stickers towards my set, it only had 4 foil stickers that I needed. After three boxes, I now have 576 out of 600 regular stickers and 102 out of 200 foil stickers. This puts me at 678 out of 800 total stickers. I’m about 84% of the way there, with two more boxes still to open.
I’m not going to lie – getting only 4 foil stickers that I needed stings. However, I did get 180 regular stickers that I needed. Overall, 73% of this box helped me get a lot closer to completing my set of 800 stickers, so I can’t be too disappointed. And the problem wasn’t necessarily with this box; had I opened this box first, I would have needed every sticker that was inside. So, maybe my issue is that so many of the foils – which are only one per pack – were doubles. Otherwise, everything about this box of 2024-25 Topps Hockey Stickers was great, from the internal collation to the quality control, to getting the two promised parallels.
Look for my fourth box break of 2024-25 Topps NHL Stickers soon!
Love hockey? Join the Puck Junk Facebook Group, listen to the Podcast, subscribe to the Newsletter and YouTube Channel, and support this site at the Online Shop.
Follow Sal Barry on Bluesky @PuckJunk and on X/Twitter @PuckJunk. ■
Related Posts:
Been following your box breaks – being only 24 stickers short of a regular set not bad – I remember from the early 1990s one of the card mags had a mathematical formula on how many packs /and or boxes it would take to complete a set (I think it was a 792 card Topps set based on 36 packs/15 cards). I think one advantage you will have now is that none of the boxes themselves yielded doubles.
If my math is right (probably not) it says you wont complete the 600 card/sticker set in the 5 boxes. In the next box you will get 198 different stickers out of the 600 needed (33%) (out of those you need 24 – 4%) – 33% x 4% x 600 = 8 – If my math is not flawed you should get 8 new stickers in the next box.
However, I am cheering for you to get to 600 in the next box break. Look forward to the next post.
John, thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts. Interesting formula. If I was better at math, I’d probably be thinking more along those lines. But I know that the more packs I open, the less likely they are to have stickers that I need. The first pack of the first box is the best because you always need every sticker (or card) that is inside. 🙂