1988 Panini Stickers

Ok, enough newfangled crap, it's time for some twenty year old stickers from our favorite Italian manufacturer. I found a few of these recently and had to get them. Somewhere packed away is my '88 Sticker album and finishing off the set is on my list of "things I need to do before I die". No I'm not calling it that other thing. Let Jack Nicholson plug his own damn movies.

398 foil San Diego Padres uniform
230 What appears to be Cal Ripken and George Bell all stars
310 I don't know who the hell this is, some Dodger
331 Mitch Webster
214 Jimmy Key
370 Sid Bream

Ecxuse me a moment while I dig up my SCD and figure out who the unnamed stickers are. It's going to drive me nuts until I do. Until then, enjoy this foil stripey brown Padres uniform sticker.


I was right on the All stars. George Bell and Cal in front of the Oakland All Star game logo. The price guide says card 310 is one half of the Dodgers Action sticker and it's either Mariano Duncan or Junior Ortiz. Junior never played for the Dodgers so by process of elimination it's Duncan. I would have never guessed that in a million years. The rest of the stickers have names on them, thank God. After all those years of nondescript Topps stickers it was nice to see stickers with an actual design on them. Topps actually had Panini producing all those sticker sets from 1981-1987, but when Topps switched to producing their own sticker-cards in 1988, Panini struck back with this massive set. 480 stickers! In a 64-page album! And they actually looked good! This surely is the pinnacle of sticker sets. I want to know why with all the hand wringing about kids not collecting cards anymore why there isn't a sticker set and album in every grocery store in the nation. Kids love the hell out of stickers, they can't be that hard to produce and at 6 stickers for 25 cents (I guess 50 cents or a buck nowadays) you could make a killing. They'd screw it up though and try to put a piece of game used bat on a sticker and give some kid a splinter and get sued. Topps actually tried a sticker/album gimmick in a Bazooka set a few years ago, but they made the stickers an insert and screwed it all up. Put stickers in every pack! Make them cheap! Encourage us to stick them all over the place without hesitation that we are ruining a chase card! Bring back fun baseball cards, dammit! Mariano demands it!