Got, Got, Need.

[CL Punk]

Last week, I was re-listening to the SCG Radio episode on First Memories of Pro-Wrestling (#86) and when Liam and the other members of The Oaken Table talked about WWF sticker books being some peoples first experience of wrestling, I remembered how it was all about the shineys (the belts and the the logos) for me and my friends.

I think this was the first book I had...

   

How about you guys?

[Shane O' Mac Version 2]

Same here but a fair while later, I got the WWF sticker book in 1999, I remember Jericho and Big Show being in it.

[Dzeko10]

I'm pretty sure the WWF metal sticker book was the first one I owned, the stickers were all pictures from 2000 I think.

[air_raid]

I had the 93 one, but the 94 one was the first one I finished. My 93 one is defaced with felt tip pen everywhere I updated the title histories. Embarrassingly Luger’s page had “1 x WWF” written on it because I believed a story I heard down the youth club that “Lex Luger came out of the sky in a helicopter, power slammed Yoko and pinned him, and he’s champion now.” Probably between putting another 10p in the Altered Beast coin op, and scoffing a polystyrene tray of chips rendered almost inedible by the salt levels.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I think the one I had would have been bought in early 2000, before I got back into watching on TV that summer but after my interest had been re-piqued by the SmackDown game demo. I think I got the album as a way to see “who everyone was”. 

The pictures on the stickers themselves were pretty much all 1999, and so were the roster pages, but I remember British Bulldog being included, a two-sticker of Christian doing a dive, and a double page for X-Pac with his catchphrase I didn’t understand, “your ass is grass and I’m gonna smoke it”. All the wrestlers had their own name logo which was one of the shinys for their page.

[Tsurutagun]

The metallic silver Mr. Perfect sticker 😍

[Mikeymike83]

First one I had was the bright blue one in 1992. I'd only gotten into wrestling about a year to 18 months before that, we didn't have sky (at the time), nor did we live in one of the itv regions that WCW played on. So my auntie taping All American Wrestling and Superstars helped facilitate my fix. I'd not seen Texas Tornado before the sticker book, and was in awe of his pictures in the book!

After that, I got the pink '93 one with Bret on the cover. I needed one sticker to complete it, which was the top half of a Shawn Michaels image. My bloody younger sister, feeling left out, cajoled my Mam into buying her it too. Think she was bought a handful of the sticker packs but mainly relied on my double doubles! Low and behold, one of the stickers she pulled out of one of those few packs was that bloody HBK one which she happily stuck in her book. Still bitter about that bastard to this day!

After that, I had the '94 Undertaker one too. It came free with the May WWF magazine and a couple packets of stickers. I didn't collect many from that one as wrestlings popularity had dropped off a cliff at that point and felt a bit of a sad case buying sticker packets adorned with an emo with long hair on the front. The only thing I remember about it was the ridiculousness of the Diesel pages being littered with him in his best shell suit. We'd only got sky in Dec '93 so I had no recollection of Diesel playing cosplay as Harry Enfield's Scouser! 

[Chili]

First one I had was the one that had a big six sticker pic of the Demolition trio. 

Also got the one that came out in maybe 1999 that had the wrestler logos you only saw on knock-off T-shirts or those WWF Attitude/Wrestlemania 2000 guide books you could buy in game shops.

Edited February 13, 2021 by Chili

[bbabba]

There are two for me, not sure which I got first.

It could be the 1995 Merlin album, which I may have got in 1996 but probably 1997, certainly only really started collecting in 1997 when I moved to a different part of the country and the newsagent next to the school still sold packs of this collection, despite it being two years out of date.  I must have been the only person still, or ever, buying them.  Well, my mum was in fairness as I was 7 years old and she would take me there on the way back from school.  Never completed the collection.  As it was the 1995 WWF roster, the quality of stars featured in the album was dire.

 

But I think the first album I ever got was this WCW one, which I'm guessing must be late 1992 or 1993.  However, I picked it up from a newsagents when on holiday at somewhere like Camber Sands in about 1996 or 1997.  It was one of those deals where you got the album and about 20 packs of stickers in the same plastic packaging for about £2.  Must have been some industry technique to shift old stock, as I picked up other non-wrestling sticker albums and 20 packs of stickers in the same way on later domestic and European holidays.  The problem was that there was no way to find any further packs of the stickers beyond what came with the album, so I have plenty of empty spaces in it.   

 

*EDIT*

Upon a further online search, it was 1992 and here is a link of full scans of the album.  Plenty of 4 sticker combos:

https://wcwworldwide.com/2015/10/wcw-uk-stickers/

**

First album I completed would have been the Metal one in 2000 I think. 

I still collect and complete the Panini World Cup sticker book every 4 years.  It costs about £150 to complete each time with moderate levels of swapping and custom ordering the last 30 or so missing stickers in from Panini.

Edited February 13, 2021 by bbabba

[air_raid]

I had that 95 one with Diesel on but for some reason was far less inclined to collect than in 93 and 94. Maybe because that’s the year I started removing the Page3 from the paper before it went in the bin for my collecting buzz. I carried on collecting figures well into the Jakks era 96-2000 but it’s highly possible if I could have spent my pocket money on a six inch plastic version of Jo Guest instead of Dr Death that I’d have jacked them in too.

[gmoney]

 

These were the first cards I remember collecting. They had stats on the back and we played a game similar to top trumps with them. 

[air_raid]

^^^^^ my mate had tons of those which hyped up SummerSlam 92 and the yellow ones which followed including a series reviewing said same show, so I started acquiring them too, and ended up with a fair stack of both sets, mostly from car boots. Somehow I found shops selling the 91 white backed ones too (in 93, God knows how. Probably the same John Menzies and no name newsagents that always seemed to stock Spanish Hasbros) and ended up with all of them. Big questions posed like “Who is Big Bully Busick???”

[JNLister]

A few years back, ITV had a documentary about Panini football stickers. The guys who came up with the idea tried to buy out the company but were outbid by Robert Maxwell, who then got the Football League license. They started their own company (Merlin) and were about to go bust but were completely saved by doing a WWF album.

[mim731]

21 minutes ago, JNLister said:

A few years back, ITV had a documentary about Panini football stickers. The guys who came up with the idea tried to buy out the company but were outbid by Robert Maxwell, who then got the Football League license. They started their own company (Merlin) and were about to go bust but were completely saved by doing a WWF album.

If it's of interest to anyone, there's a thread on this and the football sticker stuff in Off Topic. Not totally wrestling-related but probably enough crossover to make it worth a mention.

 

[The Reverend]

For me it was the OG of wrestling sticker albums, the black covered WWF edition that came out in 1990. 

It's crazy to think that although I'd seen the WWF in the late 80's, I didn't really get into it until late 1990. By that time I'd just started high school and, not having Sky at home, was trying to find out who might possibly tape some shows for me. So for me all I had was the magazine and the sticker album which I started collecting - despite not even being able to watch what I was collecting!