Footballers create trading card community

Ipswich Town's Leif Davis (left), Twitch stream Danny Campion (right) along with their friend Joshua Kelly have set up Collective Collects

A group of friends including an Ipswich Town footballer are diving deeper into their passion for trading cards by building their own community.

Collective Collects was launched by former semi-professional Irish footballer and Twitch streamer Danny Campion, Town's Leif Davis and friend Joshua Kelly.

The men buy trading cards and stream their openings online with a view to soon starting selling cards to others.

Mr Campion, 31, who is now based in London, said it was a "fun hobby" that could cater to anyone and everyone.

Davis initially connected with Mr Campion on the Twitch platform.

"It was through a mutual [friend] and he came into my stream one day, shot me a message afterwards saying how much he enjoyed it and he ended up inviting me up to a game," Mr Campion explained.

"I've been to almost every game ever since, we kicked it off really quickly.

"It was a pretty cool, organic way of meeting each other."

Davis and Mr Campion met through mutual friends on Twitch

Mr Campion had been inspired into collecting cards by another Twitch streamer and spoke with Davis about the idea of launching their own platform.

"With Leif being a footballer as well, we had something in common when it came to it and we both just got into it straight away," Mr Campion continued.

"Then we thought if we're both that passionate about it, why don't we set our own up?"

After friend Mr Kelly got involved, the team have been working to set everything up and streamed their first pack opening on Thursday night.

Davis has his own trading cards available within the community

Mr Campion said it had been important for them to do everything correctly.

"We see a lot of people doing it in a simplistic way for a quick gain of money," he added.

"We're not really in it for the money, we're in it to build something cool and it's something we're passionate about."

In recent years collecting cards has grown in popularity and over in the US, Mr Campion said he had seen some single cards go for $500,000.

"It's only going to get bigger as well as the hobby grows throughout the UK and then intertwines with the US market," he said.

"It's really exciting and really cool."