About collecting football programmes
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 accumulate football programmes without having a specific theme to their collection, and also there is the confirmed collector who has specific aims and regularly tries to acquire 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 finance. To be a collector, there is no need to own highly collectible programmes, just simply something that brings enjoyment or a sense of achievement to the collector. Football programme collectors come from all walks of life.
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 substance. However, with this comes a loss of focus, and later when restrictions may mean a particular theme has to be selected 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 a number of traditional ways to build a collection. For example, for example all those programmes involving a particular club, all those played in a particular competition, etc. Whilst collecting 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 special programmes for major finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally follow, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other major cup ties. These can basically be classified 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 editions for your favourite team. In addition to the regular league matches and cup-ties, you may also be tempted 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 from which to collect. You could, for example, decide to collect back to 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 different levels (including non-league). For the more adventurous type of collector, football programmes may have been bought from other countries.