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In general you find a few different types of collectors within the football programme enthusiast community. 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 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 his or her 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 sort after programmes, just simply something that brings pleasure or a sense of achievement to the collector. Programme collectors come from all sorts of backgrounds.

When they first start collecting, a collector may try to buy 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 further a collection.

There truly are an unlimited 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 club, 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 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 strong affiliation to a particular soccer club your mission in programme collecting may be to simply buy all issues for your favourite team. In addition to the normal league matches and cup-ties, you may also try 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 setting an earlier date for the time period for which you’re collecting. You might, for example, decide to collect back to 1965, 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 number of teams at different levels (including non-league). For the more adventurous type of collector, football programmes may have been acquired from other countries.

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

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