The newsagent who sold the first Norwich City sticker book to be completed has said he was “pleasantly surprised” to receive such a big order.
Heidi Ward from Dereham was the first collector to fill the second edition of the book when she purchased two books and 100 packs of stickers from S and S Mitchell Newsagent in Blofield.
In doing so, she became the first person to fill the new book, which celebrates 15 of the most momentous seasons in the club’s 118-year history.
And Stephen Mitchell, owner of the shop on The Street, said it was “really nice” to know he had sold the first completed album.
He said: “As a small, independent shop, I was certainly pleasantly surprised to have somebody come into the shop and say they want to buy 100 packs. I asked her if they were intentionally setting out to be the first, but she said she wasn’t.
“Last time around we moved around 3,500 packs, but the vast majority of them were from the free vouchers in the paper, so it was nice to sell that many in one go.”
Mr Mitchell said that during last year’s release, the store started a collection of its own and enjoyed doing swap shops with customers - but that this would prove slightly more difficult during the pandemic.
He said: “Last year we ended up with quite a few swaps and found our customers would also be coming in with the same duplicates when the boxes come in, so I think this year the randomisation of the boxes must have got a lot better.
“We’d love to be able to sort out some way of doing swaps later on, but at the moment it is difficult because we can only let a certain number of customers in at any one time so it’s not really ideal to have them in for long times.”
Mr Mitchell is also finding creative ways of helping customers complete their collections, by offering UPS delivery on bulk orders, which he is offering through the shop’s Facebook page.
The stickers are available in independent newsagents across the county and at PinkUnShop,co.uk. Free vouchers are printing in every daily and weekly paid for title.
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