After a month and a half, Alex Renowitzky finally had the last of 642 World Cup stickers for which he scoured the city. But the architect turned entrepreneur had to wait Wednesday until he got home to complete his collection because he promised his five year old daughter she could stick the last one in the album.
“She would kill me if I didn’t wait for her,” he said.
The stickers come from Panini, an Italian company whose sticker collections have been popular with generations of soccer lovers all over the world for their depictions of athletes, stadiums and mascots. This time around, with the World
Cup only two weeks away, the Panini craze has reached Vancouver.
Renowitzky has collected World Cup Panini stickers since he was six years old in Colombia during the 1982 World Cup. He immigrated to Canada in 2001 as a refugee and stopped collecting — until this year when he received the Panini 2014 World Cup sticker album from Mikey Martins, who owns a board game store in Tinseltown across from Renowitzky’s design business.
That was all it took for Renowitzky to start his hunt for all 642 stickers.
Martins, known as “Miami Mike,” has sold Panini albums in his One Stop Shop store for many years, but says this year sales have exploded.
“It’s cardboard crack,” he said, standing beside the Panini Brazil World Cup 2014 stand. There were five sticker packages left this week.
Renowitzky began his search by buying a box of 350 stickers from Martins’ store. About half of them were repeats, which he used to trade with other collectors. That’s when he started a Facebook group to find other Panini sticker enthusiasts in Vancouver.
“You find trust and reliability with people who you’ve never even met,” said Renowitzky.
The Panini sticker album phenomenon is much bigger in other parts of the world, especially in soccer countries. The furthest place Renowitzky has found stickers in is Evora, Portugal. He visited one of the cathedrals in the town while on vacation and the elderly woman who collected fees at the entrance was sorting through her stash of repeat stickers. Renowitzky motioned to her which ones he was missing — she didn’t speak English or Spanish — and she gave him two of hers.
“It doesn’t matter who you are — if you have the sticker I need, then I’m thinking, ‘what can I do to get it?’” said Renowitzky.
A fellow collector has even seen business benefits from trading stickers. Realtor Oscar Barrera finds himself talking with clients about their collections. “I’m always in my suit and tie, but inside my briefcase I have a special folder with my album and stickers,” he said.
Barrera has been collecting for many years, despite the activity being relatively unknown in Vancouver prior to this World Cup. In the past, he’s had to ask friends visiting Mexico, England, and other soccer-mad countries to bring back stickers.
He credits the online community for the sudden popularity of World Cup stickers in Vancouver. There’s even an app that helps collectors keep track of which stickers, identified by number, you have and which ones you’re missing.
“Basically people just look at your list and send you a message. Then you meet,” he said.
For Panini sticker collectors, the hobby means more than the stickers themselves.
“It becomes a souvenir of the World Cup. People keep these albums for life,” said Renowitzky.
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