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 infrequently, there is the casual collector who may accumulate old football programmes without having a specific theme to their collection, and also there is the confirmed collector who has distinct aims and regularly tries to purchase programmes in order to enhance their collection.
There is no exact size to a 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 sort after 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 add everything they can find to their collection as quickly as possible in order to give it some bulk. 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 really are an unlimited 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 team, all those concerned with a particular competition, etc. Whilst collecting a person is likely to discover the joys and pitfalls of buying a sought after football programme, or the frustration of not being able to find a source for one that is vital 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 ties. These can basically be classed as a Big Match programme.
If you have a big 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 try 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 might, for example, decide to collect back to 1965, etc.
A collector who is fairly 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 number of clubs at varying 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.
