Football stickers are up there with Subbuteo in the hall of football nerding fame. A staple of World Cup tournaments since the 1970s, through to Merlin’s mid-1990s dominance of the Premier League scene, football stickers are some of the most collectable football memorabilia of all time.
But Subbuteo has never been the subject of sticker treatment – until now.
Italian Subbuteo manufacturer Astrobase has launched a full sticker album chronicling the history of Subbuteo to celebrate the brand’s 75th birthday and it has teamed up with the game’s governing body FISCT to produce a full sticker album and stickers in time for the table football World Cup in Rome next month.
The Subbuteo sticker album is 56 pages and holds 360 stickers but unlike football sticker giant Panini, you can not buy the stickers in smaller packs. Instead they are being sold in four separate packs of 90 stickers each to ensure you can complete your collection without the traditional ‘got, got, need’ of swap meets.
The album is priced at 100 Euros for the album and full set of four packages, or 25 Euros for the album and a single set of stickers (90 stickers).
Astrobase says: ” 75 years are a long time, spanning at least three generations, those that have seen the birth, growth and confirmation of the game of Subbuteo in popular ludic culture, both in Italy and abroad.
“We decided to put together his past, born as a toy, which soon became a game and which gradually took on the appearance of a sport, never neglecting the two previous aspects. Year by year, point by point, with dates, places, names, facts, anecdotes.
“A concentration of passion, history and emotions that makes us proud to have told it, increasing the attachment to our world in miniature. “
Astrobase, the license holder of the upcoming World Cup in Rome, has previously released limited edition balls featuring the tournament’s logo and this is the latest launch from the prolific manufacturer of Subbuteo products.
You can see the sticker album here.