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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 beginning a programme collection, there is the latent collector who collects programmes occasionally, there is the casual collector who may collect 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 purchase programmes in order to enhance his or her collection.

There is no maximum or minimum size to a programme collection, with 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 add 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 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 of building a collection. For example, for example all those programmes concerned with a particular club, all those played in a particular competition, etc. During the course of a collection a person is likely to experience the highs and lows of buying a sought after old 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 limited number of important programmes for cup finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally support, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other big 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 chosen team. In addition to the normal 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 choosing an earlier date from which to collect. You could, for example, decide to collect back to 1940, 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 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 acquired 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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