| 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 beginning 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 specific aims and regularly tries to buy programmes in order to enhance his or her 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 expensive 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 they can find to their collection as quickly as possible in order to give it some bulk. 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 really are a limitless 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 played in a specific competition, etc. During the course of a collection a person is likely to experience the highs and lows 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 casual collectors will usually own a small number of special programmes for major finals or semi-finals for the team that they personally support, internationals, testimonials, special fixtures, or other big 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 and cup matches, 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 setting an earlier date for the time period for which you’re collecting. You could, for example, decide to collect back to 1965, etc.
A collector who is neutral in their 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 range of clubs at varying levels (including non league). For the more adventurous type of collector, football programmes may have been bought from other countries.
