A newsagents is to turn into a ‘swap shop’ for football sticker collectors.
Lee Dent, manager at Martins in Macclesfield, knows through personal experience how difficult, and expensive, it can be trying to complete a Panini sticker album.
Now the 38-year-old footie-mad dad has launched a weekly swap-fest at the shop on Thornton Square on the Weston estate, ahead of the European Championships in June.
Lee is inviting fans down and will ‘referee’ deals made between youngsters – and even adults – keen to find that one elusive sticker they need to complete their book.
Lee said: “It is kind of like a rites of passage for young football fans before a big international tournament.
“You save up your pocket money and blow it all on stickers and spend the summer in the playground and at your mates’ houses swapping them, doing deals on marquee players to try to complete the album. I never did fill one and even tried it again for the last World Cup for nostalgia.
“The experience is still the same: the anticipation and excitement of the lucky dip, tearing it open to see what you got.
“And when you got those sought after ‘shinys’ it was like that moment in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with his golden ticket.
Lee, who lives on Crompton Road with wife Emma and children Lucy, 10, and Alfie, four, was inspired to set up the swap shop after hearing it costs more than £600 to complete the album of 680 stickers.
He said: “That’s a lot of money for anyone and these days a 50p pack only gets you a five stickers.
“I want to help local kids – and adults – by giving them a friendly, safe place to come and swap their stickers.”
Manchester United fan Lee will be opening the swap shop every Sunday between 10am and midday until the final on July 10.
It’s not just children buying the stickers, a lot of adults are coming in to buy the sticker packs.
He said: “I had a bloke in his fifties come in and spend £10 on stickers the other day.”
