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About collecting football programmes

In general you find a few different types of collectors within the football programme world. There is the potential collector who has a passing interest in beginning a programme collection, there is the latent collector who collects programmes very sporadically, there is the casual collector who may accumulate football programmes without having a specific theme to their collection, and also there is the confirmed collector who has specific aims and regularly tries to purchase programmes in order to enhance his or her collection.

There is no maximum or minimum size to a collection, with the only limitations to it come in the form of your available finance. To be a collector, there is no need to own highly collectible programmes, just simply something that brings pleasure or a sense of satisfaction to the collector. Programme collectors come from all walks of life.

When they first start collecting, a collector may try to acquire everything they can find to their collection as quickly as possible in order to give it some bulk. However, with this comes a loss of tangible meaning, and later when restraints may mean a particular theme has to be selected 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 certain traditional ways to build a collection. For example, for example all those programmes involving a particular team, all those played in a particular competition, etc. Whilst collecting a person is likely to experience the joys and pitfalls of buying a rare football programme, or the frustration of not being able to find a source for one that is vital 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 special programmes for cup 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 big affection for a particular football club your mission in programme collecting may be to simply buy all editions for your favourite team. In addition to the normal league and cup matches, you may also attempt to collect programmes from friendlies, foreign tours, reserve teams, and youth teams.

One way of improving 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 1940, etc.

A collector who is fairly neutral in their affiliations, and just has a general passion for football will often widen the scope of their collection. In these sorts of collections you often find football programmes from a number of teams at varying levels (including non-league). For the more adventurous type of collector, football programmes may have been acquired from other countries.

Chris Rudolph is a football programme collector and dealer. He runs the programme collector website.

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