Collecting football programmes
In general you find a number of 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 occasionally, 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 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 expensive programmes, just simply something that brings pleasure or a sense of satisfaction to the collector. Football programme collectors come from all sorts of backgrounds.
When they first start collecting, a collector may try to add everything on offer to their collection as quickly as possible in order to give it some substance. However, with this comes a loss of focus, and later when restrictions may mean a particular theme will have to be chosen and explored in order to further a collection.
There truly are a limitless number of themes and sub-themes of programmes that can be collected. However, there are certain traditional ways of building a collection. For example, for example all those programmes concerned with a particular team, all those played in a particular competition, etc. During the course of a collection a person is likely to discover 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 special programmes for cup finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally follow, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other major cup matches. These can basically be classified as a Big Match programme.
If you have a strong affiliation to a particular football club your mission in programme collecting may be to simply buy 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 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 1970, 1960, 1950, etc.
A collector who is 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 collector, football programmes may have been acquired from countries other than his or her own.
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