Topic Reviews

About collecting football programmes

Posted July 13th, 2009 by admin

In general you find a number of different types of collectors within the football programme enthusiast community. There is the potential collector who has a passing interest in starting a programme collection, there is the latent collector who collects programmes very sporadically, there is the casual collector who may collect 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 acquire programmes in order to enhance their collection.

There is no maximum or minimum size to a programme 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 enjoyment or a sense of achievement to the collector. Football programme collectors come from all walks of life.

When they first start collecting, a collector may try to buy everything they can find to their collection as soon as they can in order to give it some substance. However, with this comes a loss of tangible meaning, and later when restraints may mean a particular theme will have to be chosen and explored in order to enhance a collection.

There really are a limitless 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 experience the highs and lows of acquiring a sought after old football programme, or the frustration of not being able to find a source for one that is vital to your collection.

Those casual collectors will usually own a limited number of important programmes for major finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally follow, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other major cup ties. These can basically be classed as a Big Match programme.

If you have a big affiliation to a particular soccer club your mission in programme collecting may be to simply acquire all editions for your chosen team. In addition to the regular league matches and cup-ties, you may also be tempted 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 choosing an earlier date from which to collect. You might, for example, decide to collect back to 1980, 1970, 1960, etc.

A collector who is neutral in their 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 number of teams at different levels (including non league). For the more adventurous collector, football programmes may have been bought from countries other than his or her own.

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