Stepping Stone Into Collecting Baseball Cards

I sat down the other day with a 2018 Topps Sticker album with stickers and wondered if this is a stepping stone for kids into the hobby of collecting baseball cards.

First off, it's very affordable. At most the albums alone cost $2 each. The 2018 album cover features a catchy/hot player in Aaron Judge.

Sticker packets usually cost $1 per pack for 8 stickers. Kids could easily do some chores or earn money for the holidays to buy packs. Even boxes of the stickers are affordable at $35 that has 300 stickers in it with 50 packs.

Inside of the album offers kids 6 free stickers to kick off their albums and also introduces them to Opening Day, which is a very kid friendly product. It also teases them to buy some packs to find 4 special edition stickers to finish their album only found in packs of Opening Day. Pretty sneaky but smart of Topps.

The back of the free stickers inside was also very genius. It's an ad for the kids to print their own baseball cards with themselves on it.  Bravo!

Each page takes the 9 best recognizable players for each team that I think kids would know the names of. I do wished they were updated with newer acquisitions but you can't win it all. It does on the other hand include top rookies. As you can see Judge isn't included on this page. He is sticker #1 in the set and is on the back inside-cover for his sticker which is odd as I would have chosen the front, but it works I guess as the front inside cover had the Opening Day ad.

In the middle of the book, there is every team to collect and you can fill in the brackets at seasons end for the champion. Or if you choose fill in your early predictions.

  

I thought while I was breaking this all down, I would rip into a couple of sticker packets to show the contents. An immediate plus is how easy the packs open and any kid of any age should be able handle these.

 

Pack one. This one was lacking a sticker. Uh oh.

Pack two had all eight and a solid lineup of players.

 

A couple of observations on the stickers themselves. The stickers are bendable, so no damage can be done to them like it would be done to cards. They will still even go in the albums but just don't look as nice as they would have been if they stayed flat. I think the stickers are affordable enough to use as a teaching point for showing kids how much better things will look if you take care of them which can cross over to cards.

I know most kids today are mostly excited about things being electronic and some suggest that using digital cards would be the way to go to get them interested in the hobby. I don't see a problem with that idea, but I think the stickers are more of a physical approach to help guide them. Sometimes digital things are more of a problem in this world then a help in my opinion.

I must also mention in closing, these stickers are not just for kids or being kid intended. I know this adult kid who writes this blog is one who enjoys piecing these together as well.