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

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

When they first start collecting, a collector may try to buy everything on offer to their collection as soon as they can in order to give it some bulk. 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 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 specific competition, etc. During the course of a collection a person is likely to discover the joys and pitfalls of acquiring a rare 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 small number of important programmes for major finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally support, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other big 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 editions for your chosen team. In addition to the regular league and cup matches, 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 from which to collect. You could, for example, decide to collect back to 1970, 1960, 1950, etc.

A collector who is fairly 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 may find football programmes from a range of teams at varying levels (including non-league). For the more adventurous collector, football programmes may have been bought from other countries.

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

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