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Starting a football programme collection
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 starting a programme collection, there is the latent collector who collects programmes very sporadically, there is the casual collector who may accumulate 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 buy 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 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. 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 bulk. 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 of building a collection. For example, for example all those programmes involving a particular team, 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 rare old 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 limited number of special programmes for cup finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally support, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other major cup matches. These can basically be classed 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 issues 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 setting an earlier date from which to collect. You could, for example, decide to collect back to 1980, 1970, 1960, etc.
A collector who is neutral in his or her 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 range of teams at different levels (including non-league). For the more adventurous type of collector, football programmes may have been bought 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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