Quote: The Chronicler of Chiswic "A poster on here was involved with the Panini stickers back in the mid-late eighties - if he's lurking around he might have some information.'"
You got me. I worked for Panini in the 1980s before setting up Merlin Publishing in 1989. Panini wouldn't touch RL but at Merlin we had two goes - the trading card set around 1992 and an SL sticker album a couple of years later. Enjoyed doing both of them but both lost money. Wire fans may find it amusing that after the official launch of the trading cards to RL commercial managers I was given a lift back to the station by Paul Cullen - then CM at Warrington. I bought a 'baseball-style' jacket off him from stock in the back of his car.
Problem is that, sadly, wendyball dominates the collectables market. In the almost thirty years I've been involved ( I consult for Merlin - now known as Topps - these days ) collections have been tried on RL, athletics, Sky Sports (generic sport) cricket, RU and the RU World Cup ( and even dedicated single-club wendyball collections like Man U etc ) and they've all lost money for the publishers.
BTW, Topps probably still have an archive of the old SL stickers if anyone still wants to finish their collection.
) which was the last English card set to be made. There are obviously others that have been made in New Zealand and Australia. Going back further there are a lot of old cigarette cards around, these can go back as far as Northern Union.
