The Sticker Book

Reposted from June 8, 2010! The only thing to update is this book seems more popular than ever. What a great way to make money for figure skating in the Olympic years ... what do you think?

2014 sticker book

In the archives of Axels, Loops, and Spins to I found a post by Aaron asking how to generate more money for the skating competitions. My idea doesn't speak to the networks airing or not airing skating, but rather a way to make money and generate interest in the competitions themselves.

Ladies and gentleman, may I introduce the official World Cup sticker book. I didn't know this, but the book has been around for generations. Okay, the cards may not have been self-adhesive back in the day, but the book's been around.



What happens is months before the World Cup, the book goes on sale in participating countries and it contains every country that made it in and their players. Plus there are cards for each stadium hosting games, the cup itself, team portraits, etc etc. The cards are sold separately in these little packages (like the baseball cards we used to buy as kids) and the goal is to collect a card for every player and stick it in the book.



These books are everywhere. Kids in school are trading the cards. Folks in the offices are trading cards. People brag that they have filled a book with the stickers of every player since 1968 or something like that. We even saw this in Panama ... a country that is not competing, hasn't made it to the World Cup, but loooooves soccer anyway.

It's pretty cool when your six-year old says, "Mom, did you know the goalie for Portugal is named Eduardo?" or a little embarrassing when she says, "Mom, why did you get so excited when I got a David Beckham card?"

So imagine the money the ISU could generate if they created a Grand Prix sticker book. (Granted, you have to know who the competitors are going to be well enough in advance.) But you could have all the competitions in one book, of course, some skaters are repeats, but you could learn who is skating where and what the other competitions would look like. Let's face it, most die-hard skating fans can't afford Skate USA, Skate Canada and the NHK Trohpy in Tokyo in one year, but they could follow along with the souvenir program of sorts.

I know there are more logistics I'm not taking into account, but help me out here guys, we could work with this ... what do you think?

Ice Skating Archive Open House!

It's June 19 - 21 and it will be fascinating for any skater or fan of ice skating. I promise.



Roy Blakey's Mpls apartment is overflowing with some 26,000 + items and his looking for a good home for all of this. Read about it here in the New York Times.

If I were in the Twin Cities I would definitely go!