An avid collector has shared his tips on how to complete the Panini's World Cup 2018 sticker collection.

The only problem is it might not be much fun.

Gary Gladwell, 50, an avid collector from Romford in Essex, said the cheapest way to collect all of the stickers was to buy boxes of 100 packets a time.

"I can understand that to parents with young kids that want to buy it, it is very expensive now - but I do believe that Panini now aim at an older market as well as children," he said.

"The reason I buy a box of stickers and other people buy a box of stickers is because you know that you're not going to get that many swaps."

Mr Gladwell said so far he had bought two boxes of 100 packets, with each packet containing five stickers, for £70 per box and had only seven stickers left to complete the latest album, which has 682 spaces.

A leading mathematician has calculated that the average cost for a single person to complete to collection is much more if buying single packets.

Professor Paul Harper has considered the best case scenario and the most likely cost of filling this year's album after the Italian brand announced the cost of a pack of five stickers was increasing from 50p to 80p.

With 32 squads of players, as well as special stickers for managers, stadiums and World Cup legends, he says the task of completing the album would cost £773.60 on average.

His calculations showed that on average you would need to buy 4,832 stickers, or 967 packets, to complete the book, costing £773.60.

Prof Harper added his calculations showed that once you had only 19 stickers left to collect, you would still need to buy 483 packets of stickers to complete the album.

"What is interesting is that to collect just the last 19 stickers for the book, you would still be required to buy 483 packets of stickers, or half the total number of expected packets," he said.

"Put another way, you are only half way through when you have just 19 stickers left to collect.