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Starting a football programme collection
In general you find four different types of collectors within the football programme world. There is the potential collector who has a passing interest in starting a programme collection, there is the latent collector who collects programmes occasionally, there is the casual collector who may accumulate old or new football programmes without having a specific theme to their collection, and also there is the confirmed collector who has precise aims and regularly tries to purchase programmes in order to enhance his or her collection.
There is no maximum or minimum size to a programme collection, and the only limitations to it come in the form of your available finance. To be a collector, there is no need to own highly sort after programmes, just simply something that brings pleasure or a sense of achievement to the collector. Programme collectors come from all walks of life.
In the early stages of a collection, a collector may try to acquire everything on offer to their collection as soon as they can in order to give it some bulk. However, with this comes a loss of focus, and later when restraints may mean a particular theme will have to be chosen and explored in order to enhance a collection.
There truly are an unlimited number of themes and sub-themes of programmes that can be collected. However, there are a number of traditional ways to build a collection. For example, for example all those programmes involving a particular club, all those played in a particular competition, etc. Whilst collecting a person is likely to discover the highs and lows of buying a sought after football programme, or the frustration of not being able to find a source for one that is key to your collection.
Those collectors who are more causal in their approach to the collecting of football programmes will usually own a limited number of important programmes for major finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally support, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other big cup matches. These can basically be classed as a Big Match programme.
If you have a strong affection for a particular soccer club your mission in programme collecting may be to simply acquire all issues for your favourite team. In addition to the regular league matches and cup-ties, you may also try to collect programmes from friendlies, foreign tours, reserve teams, and youth teams.
One way of increasing the depth and scope of your collection is by setting an earlier date for the time period for which you’re collecting. You might, for example, decide to collect back to 1970, 1960, 1950, etc.
A collector who is fairly neutral in his or her affiliations, and just has a general passion for football will tend to widen the scope of their collection. In these sorts of collections you often find football programmes from a range of teams at varying levels (including non league). For the more adventurous collector, football programmes may have been bought from countries other than his or her own.
Chris Rudolph is a football programme collector and dealer. He runs the programme collector website.
More Resources for Football Programmes
