£700 TO FILL UP A STICKER ALBUM

FANS tempted by the lure of filling a Panini football album with stickers of tournament players including England’s Harry Kane, right, should be wary how an innocent looking hobby can cost more than £1,000.

The Euro 2020 album requires 678 stickers for it to be complete. Each packet of six stickers costs 90p. Yet even if every single sticker you pulled out of the packet was different, you would still have to buy 113 packs – which would mean paying £101.70.

Unfortunately, the mathematical odds of this happening are virtually nil because of duplicates. Using the laws of probability, boffins at the

School of Mathematics at Cardiff University have calculated that with average luck you would expect to fork out more than £700 to complete an album. If unlucky, it could be as much as £2,000.

The best way to avoid buying duplicate stickers is to swap with other collectors or through trading online via a website such as eBay. If still struggling, you can buy up to 50 individual stickers from Panini paying 28p each. Collectors can draw comfort from the past: three years ago, a World Cup Mexico

1970 Panini album that was missing six stickers sold for £1,550.