This week, Stephen Butler completed a collection that he started almost 60 years ago. With the final piece in place, it’s now worth thousands of pounds, but he has no interest in selling it.
Butler was moving house five years ago when he stumbled across a box in the loft that he had not thought about in years. Inside was his old school cap, some exercise books, photos and, in the middle of it all, a 1970 Panini World Cup sticker book.
“It brought back an awful lot of memories,” said Butler.
The 1970 World Cup meant everything to Stephen at the time. He was a 13-year-old boy in the Ribble valley, Lancashire watching England play in colour for the first time, in Mexico City of all places. They had entered the tournament as cup holders, having beaten West Germany in the 1966 finals, which only added to the excitement.
“It was in colour, it was live, it was the other side of the world. So when Dad bought the colour television I thought bloody hell, bring on the school holidays.”
Decades later, Butler was surprised at the details that he still remembered. First and foremost was his concern for the players and how they would hold up in the heat, but as he flicked through the Panini sticker book he also reminisced on his favourites – Pelé and Jairzinho playing for Brazil in the final, Italian players such as Boninsegna and Facchetti, who impressed him if only with their exotic names.
The stickers were all devotedly collected in 1970, the year that marked the beginning of Panini’s 60-year partnership with Fifa, which ends in 2030. Back then, Butler paid five pre-decimalisation pennies for a pack of four stickers at the tobacconist or sweet shop. But as he flicked through the book as an adult, he noticed something: a sticker was missing.
It wasn’t a player, but a country: Chile had a sticker they earned for hosting the World Cup in Santiago, 1962, and Butler had not managed to find it in 1970.
So for five more years the collection remained unfinished, tucked away in a new box, in a new home. Until recently, when Butler heard on the radio that Panini was going to stop making the sticker books for Fifa.
“It’s a shame when that amount of heritage is lost,” says Butler. “It leaves a sour taste in the mouth.”
He looked at his book again, and thought about the missing sticker.
“Now, I’m no collector,” says Butler. But on this one occasion, he thought, he should try to finish the job. So he went online and, after some searching, found somebody selling the missing Chile sticker.
On the exact day Fifa announced that its partnership with Panini would end in 2030, Butler finished the collection he started in the year it began. He bought the Chile sticker for £150, which seemed high, but complete 1970s sticker books have auctioned for £7,000-£10,000.
“On the basis of five pennies for four stickers, I think it’s worth about 1,000 times more than what it would originally cost,” said Butler.
But he isn’t interested in selling it off. “It’s a part of my life – it brings back interesting memories,” he says. “My memories are not someone else’s, you know?”
Stephen Butler is 69 and lives near Chichester with his wife, Helen. They have three adult children “who would love to get their hands on [the sticker book]”.
“They’ll have to bid for it, won’t they?” he jokes.
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