About collecting football programmes
In general you find four different types of collectors within the football programme enthusiast community. 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 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 his or her collection.
There is no minimum or maximum size to a collection, with the only limitations to it come in the form of your financial restraints. 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 acquire 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 restraints may mean a particular theme will have to be chosen and explored in order to further 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 of building a collection. For example, for example all those programmes concerned with a particular club, all those concerned with a particular competition, etc. During the course of a collection a person is likely to experience the highs and lows of acquiring 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 small number of special programmes for cup finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally follow, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other big cup matches. These can basically be classed as a Big Match programme.
If you have a strong affiliation to a particular soccer club your mission in programme collecting may be to simply acquire all issues 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 increasing the depth and scope of your collection is by choosing an earlier date for the time period for which you’re collecting. You might, for example, decide to collect back to 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 may 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 countries other than his or her own.
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