I couldn't read. I had no concept of time. I had no clue what baseball was. I didn't know the World Series existed before the Red Sox made it there in 1986.

But stickers? Yeah, I kinda knew what stickers were. Stickers and I have enjoyed a love-love relationship my whole life. Dinosaur stickers begot robot stickers eventually begot Obey Giant stickers. So when I reached a certain collecting-and-knowing-what-baseball-was-age, stickers and I rekindled our love affair once more in the form of the Panini and Topps sticker books. I never completed my sticker albums, but I was always gung-ho.

I just want to get all of this off my chest before I start down this long, sometimes dusty, but always sticky road.

Initial Thoughts
1982 Topps Stickers. Man, that kid on the box is kind of creepy, isn't he? And yet, I'd be as stoked as he obviously is if I was eight years old and embarking on a magnificent sticker-filled adventure. If we all agree for the moment that the kid on the box was around eight years old in 1982... he would be 36 today.

Gary Carter is on the front of the album, and each page has a slightly obscured shadow portrait of a member of each team. What's creepy about this is that the eyes have been removed from each person, leaving somewhat anonymous baseball-playing zombies haunting the backgrounds of each page.

Twenty cents for five stickers to a pack, which means the minimum a kid was spending to fill his or her album was (260 stickers/5= 52 unique packs) 52 x 20¢ = $10.40 (+ 25¢ for the album)... So a total of $10.65 to complete the album without ever getting a double. Not exactly chump change to a kid in 1982.

So I've armed myself with a complete, unopened box of stickers (100 packs), which was easier than expected to track down, and an unused sticker album.

Let's get this sticker party started.