Another gentleman who responds to my post notes we have a mutual social media friend and asks whether I’m near Telford.
Having taken all safety precautions – and drilled my son fully on stranger danger – we arrange to meet in the car park of a service station to trade the grand total of 11 stickers. I tell myself this will reduce the cost of the stamps needed to conduct trades by post.
The man’s name is Mark and he’s collecting with his girlfriend – he organises the trades and she’s the one who sticks them in.
Together, he and my son lament the lack of stickers in our local supermarket.
For anyone who wants to swap in person in a more organised way, Panini does arrange public swap events, external, with hundreds attending meet-ups in Coventry, Solihull, Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent among towns and cities across the country.
In a second meeting, postage stamps come up again. A man called Matt tells us that swapping stickers is the first situation in which he’s ever had to buy any. He is in his 20s.