2016 Panini NFL Stickers

For the last few years I have always bought a box or two of Panini's NFL stickers. I have yet to complete a set, and haven't even taken advantage of their "missing stickers" order form in the middle of the book.

I am a big fan of the stickers as they are an inexpensive way to get kids to start collecting. The very first sticker set that I collected was the 1979-80 Panini Hockey World Championship set. One of the hockey rinks that I played at sold the stickers and I made sure to always pick some up with my allowance money every time that I played there. I still have the mostly complete sticker book.


That being said, I bought a box of this year's football stickers last week and I'll show you examples of the various stickers found in the set, using Browns stickers when possible, but other teams for types of stickers that I didn't get a Browns one of, or where there are no Browns in the set.


The first 8 stickers of the 485 sticker set are a breakdown of the various NFL divisions.

Sticker #2 - AFC North

The backs have the sticker number, and an ad for Panini Gridiron. The album separates the AFC and NFC and has the division name for each listed under the spot for that sticker.

Some of the backs are horizontal, but still have the same information.


Stickers 9-14 show draft picks at the 2016 NFL Draft. The stickers are of the first 4 picks (Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Joey Bosa and Ezekiel Elliott) and the 22nd and 23rd picks (Josh Doctson and Laquon Treadwell). I'm not sure why they jumped to the 22nd and 23rd picks, but recall that they have done that before. The album just lists the pick number (1st Overall, 2nd Overall, etc.) under the space for the sticker and doesn't give the name or any information of the player chosen.

Sticker #12 - 4th Overall Draft Pick

A lot is expected of Ezekel Elliott running behind the Cowboys offensive line. I hope he does well and that with his success teams will once again look at running backs higher in the draft.


From there the set has pages for all 32 teams, each team getting 14 stickers. The breakdown for each team is as follows.


Each team has a foil logo sticker. The spot for the sticker shows the conference and team logos, but doesn't have the city or franchise starting date in the album.

Sticker #183 - Foil Denver Broncos Logo

Each team also has a mascot sticker. However, these are not the regular team mascots that you might first think of. These are the "Rusherz" from the NFL kids cartoon "NFL Rush Zone". For these, in the album, there is just an empty space with no information other than the sticker number.

Sticker #100 - Browns Rusher

I like how it looks like a fabric background on the stickers.


There are also three foil stickers for each team, with each of the players also having a regular sticker as well.

Sticker #103

I liked seeing RGIII in a Browns uniform, and also seeing that Travis Benjamin was in a Chargers uniform. The stickers account for many of the off-season moves.

Sticker #102

The color surrounding the name and helmet is coded to each team, with the Browns having (surprise!) a brown background. It doesn't show up great on scans of the Browns' foil stickers, but will be seen more easily below.


Under each foil sticker spot there is a comment for each player. Duke Johnson's reads, "Third on the Browns in 2015 with 913 yards from scrimmage."


Of the nine cards left per team, eight of them are regular player stickers.

Sticker #105

Sticker #106

Sticker #107

As you can see, rookies are marked. From looking through the sticker book it doesn't appear that every team has a rookie in the set. Coleman is the only Browns rookie in the set.

Sticker #111

Sticker 112

There is information regarding each player on the side and below each of the regular stickers. Looking at the spot for Joe Haden's sticker, along the side at the bottom it shows his position 'CB', and above that lists his DOB, college, height, weight and seasons played. Below the spot for the sticker it has his 2015 season and career stats.


For RGIII they show the 2014 season stats as he did not play in 2015, and for Joe Thomas' spot in the album they just list the following information, "Six-time First Team All-Pro", "Selected to nine consecutive Pro Bowls (2007-15)", and "Co-hosted the show Outdoors Ohio with D'Arcy Egan".


I'm not sure what to call the last card in each team set. I'm going to go with it being an animated version of one player on each team. It is a second sticker of a player already in the team set, but not one of the players that are a foil for the team.

Sticker #411

I think that these were probably made by having a computer turn a photo into animation, but I'm not sure. All I know is that I really like them. They look pretty cool. This sticker is featured in the middle of the page surrounded by the regular team stickers. The space has no information around it, but the place where it goes has the sticker number and team logo.


After all the teams are dealt with, there is a page for Pop Warner football with stickers 463-469. The first six appear to be action shots, with #469 being a foil Pop Warner logo. No information is provided in the album about any of the stickers.

Sticker #463

Sticker #469

The next page of the sticker album is dedicated to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2016. Stickers 470-475 are the six inductees and sticker 476 is a foil sticker of the Hall of Fame logo.

Sticker #470

It is interesting that the college is shown for each of the Hall of Fame inductees.

Sticker #476

In the album there is a small section detailing what years the player played in the NFL, their position and some highlights for each player. For example, Favre's shows that he is a QB, played from 1991-2010, was a "3X NFL MVP", and has a "NFL RECORD 297 CONSECUTIVE GAME PLAYED".


Stickers 477-483 are of Super Bowl 50.

Sticker #478

Each sticker has its own caption underneath it in the album. The caption for the above sticker reads, "Carolina's Luke Kuechly brings down Peyton Manning in the fourth quarter. The Panthers notched five sacks in the contest."


Finally, on the last page of the sticker album are stickers 484-485. There were no captions or any identifying information in the album for these stickers, and I didn't get either of the stickers. Looking on eBay, I found out that sticker 484 was a foil NFL logo, and sticker 485 was a foil sticker of an official NFL football.


Each pack of stickers is priced at $1.00, and contains 7 stickers. A box of stickers has 50 packs. Of the 350 stickers in my box, I received 270 different stickers. I may buy a second box at some point to try and complete the set, but have found in the past that I haven't had any luck doing that.


All in all, though, I really enjoy the stickers that Panini puts out and look forward to them each year.