Starting a football programme collection
October 4, 2009
In general you find a number of 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 very sporadically, there is the casual collector who may collect old 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 exact size to a programme collection, and 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 pleasure or a sense of achievement to the collector. Programme collectors come from all sorts of backgrounds.
In the early stages of a collection, a collector may try to add everything they can find to their collection as quickly as possible in order to give it some substance. However, with this comes a loss of tangible meaning, and later when restraints may mean a particular theme will have to be chosen and explored in order to enhance a collection.
There really are an unlimited number of themes and sub-themes of programmes that can be collected. However, there are a number of traditional ways of building a collection. For example, for example all those programmes involving a particular team, all those concerned with a specific competition, etc. During the course of a collection a person is likely to experience the joys and pitfalls of acquiring a rare 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 small 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 classed as a Big Match programme.
If you have a big affiliation to a particular soccer club your mission in programme collecting may be to simply purchase all issues 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 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 range 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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