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Dying hobby?
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Bokbag



Joined: 12 May 2018
Posts: 149

PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:00 pm 
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Hi,

I have seen in a couple of places people talking about programme collecting being a dying hobby. I am intrigued to know what everyone's thoughts were and why people may think that (or otherwise). I have noticed a drop in prices for newer programmes but thought this may just reflect ease of buying and more availability rather than a reduction in interest.

Craig
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beaudog



Joined: 06 Nov 2011
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:01 pm 
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As someone who has collected and been interested in football programmes for about 60 years and as someone who has a weekly market stall at Newcastle under Lyme on a Thursday I would like to give my views. There are a reduced number of serious collectors. In the number of years I have been dealing my regular serious collectors have gone down dramatically, and often as a result of dieing. There are very, very few youngsters coming into the hobby as all they know are the volumes that they are fed on today and have very little feel for the history and culture of their club and others. many of my customers are impulsive, I 'll buy that for a quid types, who probably scan, refer then dump their purchase. Thank goodness there are a few fantastic buyers who pay good money for the right items, quality and rarity will always appeal. The nonsense with downloads and not producing programmes is another blow to our hobby, but collecting todays issues is beyond me.
Kids today do not collect and store and learn from their hobbies as we did. Hope to see some of you at my stall at Newcastle, helping to keep our hobby and an older man very much alive, against all the odds.
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Rafehod



Joined: 25 Sep 2009
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Location: Wirral, Merseyside

PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:09 pm 
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I used to deal in programmes for about 10 years mainly on ebay but stopped about 8 years ago and changed my product lines but have had a little dabble here and there when the opportunity arose.

looking from a viewpoint of what prices I used to achieve and to what I have seen regards current sales on ebay for auctions and BIN listings both single items and bulk lots is a staggering decline in value and interest.

My personal opinion is that ebay has killed the hobby from a sellers point of view as even 50s programmes are now falling into the 99p bracket which is just ridiculous. I also believe from a buyers point of view, its also made it to 'easy' to find the programmes you require, obviously not all as we all know too well. However when you see 7 or 8 copies for most programmes freely available then where is the challenge? it becomes a bit boring.

I used to love getting my posted catalogues and hoping that the programme I was waiting for was finally in print or searching for it at a fair, but maybe its just all too accessible.

Yes the rare stuff has always kept the value but even those value have declined a bit and when you try to get decent programmes at auction in bulk they recognise that the only way they can get rid of the 70s plus crap is to chuck some reasonable 50s and 60s content in with them to make you take the rubbish away.

I seriously was thinking of getting back into it, but having looked at the state of the market these days I will steer clear and stick to what I am doing.
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goonerboy



Joined: 24 Aug 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:59 pm 
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I have never been a dealer only a collector and have got to say that ebay has been a god send to me and i suspect many collectors. It has driven prices right down so that even so called rarities are often at modest prices. It has changed the dynamic of the market dramatically. In the past rarities were often dictated by dealers rather than necessarily reality. It was not unknown for dealers to have several copies of a rarity and drip feed it into the market and creating the environment. I know one dealer who used to bid high on tickets for his specialist club in order to create a "going rate" for his catalogue.

As with all collectables the market price will find its true level sooner or later and ebay has enabled that to happen. As said above the true rarities will always do well while run of the mill large quantity items are easy to find and cheap to buy.

Of course for many collectors it is the chase that is the thrill or a large part of it and ebay has diminished that for a lot of items. On the other hand i found no joy in paying subscriptions galore for catalogues and just because i was at work when the post arrived then by the time i rang in an order for an item it was gone.

I still enjoy the odd fair and keep an eye on auctions but ebay now has so many items and memorabilia that you dont get via other sources.

In fact if kids were into collecting then ebay would be the saviour of the hobby.....it is online and items are cheap so they can build a collection quickly. Sadly there are wider ranging issues as to why kids dont collect including that clubs dont do enough themselves to encourage it which is one reason we have got to the point of many now moaning at the lack of sales. The chicken has come home to roost. If they didnt produce glossy drivel then they would have more interest.

Going back to the original question, i guess its a bit early to tell. A lot of "serious collectors" are middle age with disposable income and it is as much about nostalgia and "male hoarding behaviour" as it is about loving programmes per se. Will todays young football fans follow suit in 20-30 years time ? I don't honestly know. Will they be spending their money on "Total War 40" or whatever or will they look for a collectable based hobby focussed on nostalgic memories of their youth when there where things called programmes when you went to a match. I hope the latter....perhaps my currently worthless 60s/70s/80s/90s programmes will be able to find a buyer.
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Eck



Joined: 25 Aug 2012
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:04 pm 
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There has been a bit of a resurgence in Scotland and programme fairs in Auchinleck and Glasgow are thriving another one up north coming up and I hope a few others as well.
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Ronsaunders



Joined: 11 Feb 2010
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:36 pm 
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Eck wrote:
There has been a bit of a resurgence in Scotland and programme fairs in Auchinleck and Glasgow are thriving another one up north coming up and I hope a few others as well.

In fairness Eck, the Rangers buy and sell page has really invigorated the market for Rangers stuff.

Personally, I think that the hobby is dying. Firstly, the kids are more used to digital / disposable media.
Secondly, when I was a nipper, people knew that I loved football and so brought me programmes from all over. I can remember from 74/75 basically getting all the Villa programmes, most Man Utd, Wolves, Walsall and the cup finals and England internationals. At 10p-15p maximum, people would get one for me. Nowadays, they cost an arm and a leg AND also take up so much room that I wouldn't want my kids to start because it would take over the house.

It may not be on the last legs, but it is dying a death of a thousand cuts I fear.


Last edited by Ronsaunders on Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:30 am; edited 1 time in total
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Eck



Joined: 25 Aug 2012
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:24 am 
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That is true Ronsaunders but I think where there is an interest in your club's history match programmes from the past will always be collectable. The modern day match programme may be dying a death but it is always possible for interest to increase again I wonder if collecting stamps,coins and antiques right across the board is also suffering the same fate. I had quite a tidy Rangers collection but I have found out I wasn't in the top 200 Rangers collectors.
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Dorking



Joined: 05 Feb 2010
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 6:32 am 
Post subject: Re: Dying hobby?
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beaudog wrote:
A

There are very, very few youngsters coming into the hobby as all they know are the volumes that they are fed on today and have very little feel for the history and culture of their club and others.

Kids today do not collect and store and learn from their hobbies as we did. .



^this

When I was a kid, getting a copy of Shoot! magazine was as much about learning all the club nicknames down to Scottish Div 3 from the 'League Ladders' as it was about the top stars you'd see playing for Liverpool on tv.


Now it's just glossy pictures of Messi, Ronaldo and Neymar, pictures of £100+ boots and articles about FIFA (the video game).

Modern football is so very different to when we were kids.

I'm amazed the sticker albums keep going, but I suspect a large percentage of the people buying are middle aged adults!
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Grumpypants



Joined: 09 Feb 2012
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:20 am 
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Totally agree with everything that has been previously said above. I have just received my copy of the Official World Cup Final, and what a complete disappointment it is. Unless I have missed something, I can't even find a listing of the team line up's within the contents. It appears to be a brochure evaluating the progress (or not) of all the other teams that has competed in the Finals, 180 pages of complete drivel and whole pages of adverts. It is very bulky and will be difficult to store and expensive for what it is.
I don't see myself purchasing any further major competition programmes or indeed any more modern programmes.
I particularly hate the statistic pages that appear, I don't want to know about 'completed passes' or 'how far a player has run' during a match., even worse is the interview with a player on 'what is your favouite coulour' or 'what do you like to eat'. Even the modern football magazines are going the same way. I do believe the hobby is dying and I have seen too many long time collectors now selling their collections to try and recoup some money before there is no interest in the hobby what so ever. I am even thinking of doing the same myself.
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Eck



Joined: 25 Aug 2012
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 10:19 am 
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If you look at every Rangers programme in a season every one is the same really, I think most people don't read them anymore.
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Texas Rangers



Joined: 03 Oct 2015
Posts: 264

PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:08 pm 
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The hobby has never been a "trendy" hobby. I would equate it to coin or stamp collecting but with a much much smaller base. It would be interesting to see what the numbers in those two hobbies are relative to say 40 years ago are. I'd bet they have gone down too.

Back in the 70's when I first started collecting, although it wasn't exactly current information you'd get, it was a decent source of reasonably current info plus some information like player profiles you might not be able to find elsewhere. Other than your Shoot magazine type or maybe club newspaper if they had one, you really couldn't find that information elsewhere. For me as I branched away from only collecting Rangers programs it was a way for me to educate myself on other clubs. Fast forward to today and you can find what every player out there ate for breakfast today thanks to http:

So information technology has done a number on the hobby for sure and it's hard to see how the current or future generations take to the hobby sadly. Personally, I dropped out of the hobby for the best part of 25 years when I moved over here and now am very selective about what I buy.
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Dorking



Joined: 05 Feb 2010
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:16 pm 
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The coin and stamp 'industry' are at least intelligent enough to have evolved so that they give people what they want (or what they think they want), hence all the limited edition 50p and £2 coins, with war anniversaries and Beatrix Potter characters on them. And for stamps a new set of picture stamps every 3 or 4 weeks and multiple ways to buy them, eg first day covers, whole sheets, special pictoral plates etc

Programmes as has been said on 3 or 4 threads like this one need to slim down to be a better version of what they were 25 years ago, and should be 2 quid a piece max. And that price should ensure that 80 page whoppers are not issued
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Texas Rangers



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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:46 pm 
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Yip, for sure.
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Tynie Topics



Joined: 26 Nov 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 3:26 pm 
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goonerboy wrote:
I have never been a dealer only a collector and have got to say that ebay has been a god send to me and i suspect many collectors. It has driven prices right down so that even so called rarities are often at modest prices. It has changed the dynamic of the market dramatically. In the past rarities were often dictated by dealers rather than necessarily reality. It was not unknown for dealers to have several copies of a rarity and drip feed it into the market and creating the environment. I know one dealer who used to bid high on tickets for his specialist club in order to create a "going rate" for his catalogue.

As with all collectables the market price will find its true level sooner or later and ebay has enabled that to happen. As said above the true rarities will always do well while run of the mill large quantity items are easy to find and cheap to buy.

Of course for many collectors it is the chase that is the thrill or a large part of it and ebay has diminished that for a lot of items. On the other hand i found no joy in paying subscriptions galore for catalogues and just because i was at work when the post arrived then by the time i rang in an order for an item it was gone.


I tend to agree with this. I wonder what the stats are of programmes sold on eBay say every month, I bet it’s an exceptionally high figure.

eBay has made the hobby far more accessible and far cheaper to get a decent collection together rather than the old days of having to rely mainly on dealers catalogues where there was a bit of a cartel going on in some areas keeping prices artificially inflated. Fast forward to today and older collectors are finding out the hard way (inc me occasionally) that the £200 programme they bought 25 years ago is actually only worth £30 today because eBay has exposed the fact that there are more copies of a particular programme around than people were lead to believe in the old days. You also get to see a picture of the programme rather than having to take a punt on condition, one mans slight crease is another mans heavy fold used to be the old gripe. Condition affects price, harder to be vague when there’s a picture available.

eBay (and auctions to a certain extent) make it much easier for programmes to come on the market so rather than sellers going to dealers, it’s very easy to pop it onto eBay and reach millions of buyers. People who may have binned a box of old programmes they found in grandads loft in the past, may now list them on eBay or approach an auction house as they are aware that in many cases, old stuff always has a value, nostalgia is popular, there’s plenty of TV programmes of that genre. They’ll take a punt, so more copies become available. That’s a large part of the reason your 1950’s programme can now be had for £2-£3 on eBay.

The hobby isn’t really dying IMO, maybe less popular than the 1970’s, but not dying. I don’t think you can measure the health of the hobby with prices of run-of-the-mill programmes, for the reasons stated.

Where this leaves modern day programmes I don’t know, I doubt they will ever be collectable, too bulky and too expensive to be hugely popular, and you don’t need them to get hold of information. Maybe reverting to smaller programmes as suggested AND making them free, let the advertisers cover the cost of production and their adverts will reach a wider audience. 32 pages, 16 of content and 16 of adverts. Would anyone grumble?
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Dorking



Joined: 05 Feb 2010
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 5:25 pm 
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Colchester got it bang on the money - a programme for everyone in the stadium.

Time will tell them that actually they only need to print 60% of the attendance (or whatever) as many don't even want them when they are free.

I've been to internationals abroad where they have been free, and there are none left at the end, so whilst some people can't be bothered, others will take extras for friends and family, which is a form of wider advertising anyway
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derby1884
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2018 10:35 pm 
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It's the sheer bulk of the damned things that puts people off collecting. No matter how interested a nipper is in his club, it's a struggle to plough through 96 pages no matter how glossy the product is. I struggle and I've been at this lark for almost 50 years.

When I was 12/13, I used to pour over every page of those early 70s issues because every page mattered and the programmes were, even on a pocket money budget, affordable.

In an ideal world, I'd rather clubs issued a 16 page programme priced at no more than £1. If that wasn't an option and it came to a choice between either a 96 page effort costing anything up to a fiver or "no programme", then I'm at the point now where I'd opt for the latter.

On a more general note, though, we live in an ever increasing "instant" society. What a match programme once was, isn't now. Any more than newspapers are. Buy a paper, the news is already old compared to the internet sites. Buy a programme etc etc.....
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Tynie Topics



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PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2018 10:45 pm 
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Dorking wrote:
Colchester got it bang on the money - a programme for everyone in the stadium.

Time will tell them that actually they only need to print 60% of the attendance (or whatever) as many don't even want them when they are free.

I've been to internationals abroad where they have been free, and there are none left at the end, so whilst some people can't be bothered, others will take extras for friends and family, which is a form of wider advertising anyway


Be interesting to see how it goes with Colchester, surely advertisers/sponsors want their advert seen by as many people as possible, not just the 1 in 6 who buy the programme, and they'll pay a little extra for it which would cover production costs.
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Ronsaunders



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PostPosted: Sun Jul 22, 2018 11:06 pm 
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Derby1884 is spot on. I looked at the last programme for Stoke last season. about 25% of the 80+ pages had reading material. The rest was photos, adverts and general guff.
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Rafehod



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PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:16 am 
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I think it is a real shame, that a sporting event will not be coupled by the production of a programme to mark the occasion. Football has got this so wrong, simply turning these into a money raising tool for advertising revenue. I agree with all above, modern programmes are full of garbage and more than likely never read, Absolutely disgraceful.

If a club produced a 60s/70s A5 sized type of programme, I bet it would sell better and increase interest in the club as the supporters would have some light reading with relevant articles with regards to the club and players they support.

Of course they wont as there would not be enough room to cash in on advertising revenue 'otherwise what is the point' would be the argument of the selfish moneymen within the club. Football nowadays is all about money and the fans come way down the list of priorities especially the season ticket holders as once they have your cash they dont give a shit.
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Dorking



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PostPosted: Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:49 am 
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Smaller is the way to go. I suspect at Premier League clubs, the American and Far East 'football tourists' are a big part of regular matchday sales?

These fans have plenty of cash in their pocket and love a souvenir or two.

Just hope it never goes the way some international matches are catered for, ie VIPs get programmes only, and the die hard collectors have to struggle to obtain them by any means possible
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