In general you find four 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 infrequently, 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 specific aims and regularly tries to purchase programmes in order to enhance their collection.

There is no maximum or minimum size to a 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 collectible programmes, just simply something that brings enjoyment or a sense of achievement to the collector. Football programme collectors come from all sorts of backgrounds.

When they first start collecting, a collector may try to add 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 restrictions may mean a particular theme will have to be chosen and explored in order to enhance 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 involving a particular team, all those played in a specific 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 matches. These can basically be classified as a Big Match programme.

If you have a strong affection for a particular football 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 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 choosing an earlier date for the time period for which you’re collecting. You might, for example, decide to collect back to 1980, 1970, 1960, etc.

A collector who is fairly 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 may find football programmes from a range 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.

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

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