sniff collector

In addition to being an UPPERCASE contributor, Amy Peppler-Adams is a graphic designer, budding surface pattern designer and co-author of the Vintage Scratch & Sniff Collector's Guide. She recently wrote about her experience as a scratch and sniff sticker collector on her blog. 

"Some of you may know that my obsession with collecting (hoarding) includes a passion for vintage stickers from the 1970s and '80s. For the first 10 years of the 2000s, right after I turned 30, I was consumed with finding and buying all the stickers I collected as a kid, replacing all those I had stuck to old notebooks and magnetic photo albums with pristine, unused stickers on their original backings. This included scratch and sniff stickers, which had to be unscratched and still have their smell. And I wasn't the only one—eBay was crawling with avid sticker collectors, especially those who wanted sniff stickers. It was a tense 10 years, watching hundreds if not thousands of listings and usually bidding at the last second to try to win. But my collection is nearly complete, and occasionally I am able to fill in some holes when I get the inkling to check out the eBay listings again.

During this time I was fortunate to collaborate with a fellow collector, bubbledog, writing a book dedicated to scratch and sniff stickers: the Vintage Scratch & Sniff Stickers Collector's Guide."

Amy says she was "thrilled to have contributed a short article about the stinky pieces of paper" for issue #17. 

​If you're interested in starting your own scratch and sniff sticker collection, you're in luck. Email win@uppercasemagazine.com by May 15 to be entered to win a copy of Vintage Scratch & Sniff Stickers Collector's Guide.