Collecting football programmes
In general you find a few different types of collectors within the football programme communiuty. 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 collect 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 minimum or maximum size to a programme collection, with the only limitations to it come in the form of your available funding. To be a collector, there is no need to own highly collectible programmes, just simply something that brings pleasure or a sense of achievement to the collector. Football 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 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 has to be selected 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 certain traditional ways to build a collection. For example, for example all those programmes concerned with a particular club, all those played in a particular competition, etc. Whilst collecting a person is likely to discover the highs and lows of acquiring a rare football programme, or the frustration of not being able to find a source for one that is key to your collection.
Those casual collectors will usually own a small number of special 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 classified 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 editions for your favourite team. In addition to the regular 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 1940, etc.
A collector who is 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 different 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.