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Japan’s sticker wars are reaching a breaking point, even for enthusiasts

Krista Rogers Jun 4, 2026
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Our resident sticker-collecting writer shares why she’s saying “enough is enough” and is extricating herself from a sticky situation.

Sticker collecting and trading as a hobby has been sweeping Japan among kids and adults alike for a while now, to the point that puffy stickers were sold out last year and people were shelling out ridiculous amounts of money to get their hands on them. Our Japanese-language reporter Haruka Takagi also got all in on the fun herself, even making new friends through this shared interest…until recently, that is. She suddenly stopped collecting them last month for one simple reason–she got tired of the hassle.

Now, there are still plenty of stickers that she hasn’t gotten her hands on yet, such as those from the 3-D Bon Bon Drops brand, anything featuring her beloved pandas, Sanrio’s Pompompurin, and more that she’s seen on social media. The company behind Bon Bon Drops recently announced that it increased its production by 2.5 times due to popular demand…which sounds like she should be able to easily get her hands on them, no? The truth isn’t quite so simple.

▼ Keep calm and stick on

As a homebody, Haruka prefers purchasing most of her stickers online on places like Amazon and Rakuten through the official manufacturers’ pages. Until not that long ago, she was able to purchase stickers by occasionally browsing these sites and placing an order. Even if some of them sold out in five minutes, that still gave her enough time to look through the options and use her loyalty points. However, that practice changed completely with the advent of “breaking news” sticker social media sites, where certain accounts give notifications at the exact moment popular stickers go on sale, causing tens of thousands of fans to flood the shopping sites all at once. She can barely even buy stickers online at all now as a result.

She could try proactively patrolling her usual pages before these kinds of announcements are made, but that practice is unsustainable. Although she’s a freelance writer, that doesn’t mean she has the time to obsessively check these sites every hour, especially when she’s wearing her “mom hat.” The situation is also unrealistic for physical store locations, where stickers might sell out in five minutes and then customers have to either store-hop from place to place or wait for hours on-site for workers to restock them. It doesn’t make any sense to go to these extreme lengths for what’s supposed to be a simple hobby.

A further concern is that the stickers Haruka orders might not arrive–if she even manages to buy them in the first place. She’s been hearing more and more about such cases recently, and has even personally experienced not getting a set that she went through a lot of trouble to order that never came and the ensuing emotional letdown. She’s realized that when a site lists things like “reserve now” or “estimated restock time,” sometimes the stickers don’t materialize for months, or the store might even cancel the order after a certain amount of time.

That frustration led her to consider making purchases from third-party sellers on auction sites. Initially she was enthusiastic about the idea because the prices weren’t that far off from the manufacturers’ prices, and she should be able to find her favorites more easily. However, she then learned that the tradeoff is that counterfeits abound. Take the Tamagotchi sets pictured below, for instance, which appear to be almost indistinguishable at a glance. However, she received the fake version from a third-party seller, which made her lose trust in such sites.

▼ Genuine set (left) versus counterfeit set (right)

However, the final straw that broke the camel’s back for Haruka’s sticker collecting was the official manufacturers announcing that they would be releasing dozens of new sticker sets, seemingly all at once, too.

While the prospect of new stickers may sound exciting, Haruka had a completely different natural reaction to the news along the lines of the following:

“That probably means they’ll be discontinuing the ones I want and have been waiting for forever.”
“It’s not like I’ll be able to get my hands on any of the new ones anyway…”
“I’m so tired of this.”

Since then, all of the fiery passion that she once had for growing her collection dimmed until it was nothing more than a whiff of smoke. Now she feels strangely sad when she hears about newly released sticker sets, which is why she’s decided to take a break from stickers altogether.

That doesn’t mean Haruka’s given up all hope, though. She has faith that someday she’ll be able to pick her hobby back up again, whenever she can leisurely browse through the options and not have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get them. In the meantime, we hope she’ll consider starting a new collection–ideally something that won’t become just as complicated.

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[ Read in Japanese ]