Collecting stickers

Last month I was playing the Minimalism Game again, and found myself hunting through forgotten cupboards and shelves on my discarding mission. As part of the process I unearthed a treasured possession - my old sticker album - and I thought I'd share some pictures with you! By co-incidence, on the same day over on Twitter I spotted a post from Bugs and Fishes sharing a sticker album that looks remarkably similar, so do head over there for more vintage sticker love!

You'll notice that I've written my class on the front of the album, because it was taken into school to swap with my friends. From memory the entire class joined in, and values were quickly assigned to stickers according to how rare and desirable they were. I was in Year 8 when I was sticker swapping, so around 12 to 13 years old - I wonder whether young teenagers today are still into swapping stickers, I'm not sure!

My favourite stickers were probably the furry ones. When I bought my stickers they were sold on rolls, from which you could tear off individual perforated sheets. Each sheet measured around 5cm square and held four or five smaller stickers, or sometimes a sheet held one larger individual sticker. Usually each sheet on the roll was the same, but sometimes there were different stickers alternating. I seem to remember each sheet costing about 10p, perhaps 20p for the special ones, and I would buy several sheets at a time with my pocket money. 

There was a particular gift shop in the town where my Grandma lived which was a great source of stickers, because they were different to the ones in my home town. When we went to visit I would try and make a special trip, and usually bought a couple of each sheet, one for me and one for swapping. Some of the girls brought in entire rolls of stickers that they had somehow acquired, so these were all shared around. You'll notice a few stickers above and below with Trolls on - another craze going on at the same time!

My preferences changed at some point towards the foil ones. One a later page of my album I've stuck in some more recently that the children were given, and that I couldn't resist adding to my collection!

When Harry was a toddler I ended up with lots of packets of emergency vehicle stickers. We used them for crafting when he was little, and I stuck some of my favourites into the album to keep as a memento. The stickers below are pearly ones that I was also rather fond of, and I think you'll see that overall I was particularly drawn towards cute animal stickers!

The children love looking through my album, although I'm on edge when they have it, as it's rather delicate now. Mia has her own sticker album but it's not a very good quality one, I need to see if you can still buy something similar to these. Perhaps she can start her own sticker swapping craze at school!

Did you have one of these albums when you were at school? Are you like me and tempted to start up sticker collecting again?