Not sure I'd want to bid after seeing the picture...

[colchestersid]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RARE-FOOTBALL-BOUND-VOLUME-PROGRAMMES-FC-BARCELONA-BARCA-SPAIN-ESPANA-1952-1953/233358027456?hash=item365538eac0:g:nD4AAOSwJcldbUiO

Why didn't he just use his hands?

[Auchinleckian]

He's had them three or four times gradually reducing them from the £499.99 he initially put on them. There were a couple of similar bound volumes with an outrageous guide price against them at sportingold's last auction which nobody looked at.

In 2003 I went to Barcelona on holiday with my wife for the first time. Just around the corner from my hotel was a street crammed with collector's shops and old bookshops - I was in heaven.

At one such shop I walked in, and it was very small and crammed to the rafters of anything and everything collectable. I saw them immediately though through everything else, Barcelona bound volumes from 1948-9 season through to 1959-60. "How much" 100 Euros each came the reply. I bought the two volumes with the Hull and Burnley friendlies in knowing I was on to a good thing there.

The next day we visited the museum at Camp Nou, and I saw a notice for their library so I went in and spoke to the curator / librarian, and asked him what he knew about Barca bound volumes, ie were they done every year? He said he didn't know, he knew they did bound volumes many years before but Barca didn't have any in their museum! They were very rare indeed.

Armed with that knowledge I took a taxi back to the shop and immediately bought the rest of them courtesy of the credit card. I did very well on them over a couple of years, but they do appear very, very, occasionally now. It was nice though, to know for a little while that I had something the Barcelona museum would have loved to have had.

[Flaming Pie]

Auchinleckian,, great story. You dream about walking into a bookshop like that one you visited in Barcelona. I bet you had visited hundreds over the years and didn’t spot a thing. Didn’t someone once say that it takes a lot of hard work to be lucky!

[Pete’s Picture Palace]

Gary Player - the harder I work, the luckier I get.

[Auchinleckian]

It was our first trip to Barcelona, and the street was basically next door to the hotel. It wasn't pre internet, but the information in 2003 was nothing like it is today, and the whole thing was totally unplanned. I wrote about collecting in Barcelona in my Programme Monthly article the other month, as we've been back many times.

There's a superb book market every Sunday at Sant Antoni, where the approach roads are cordoned off each side of the bridge and the space utilised for selling books and much more. There's usually three or four selling Barca 40s and 50s programmes very reasonably, and others selling other Barca memorabilia.

I know of numerous such markets now in the City and plan my time there accordingly. It's a superb place to go for any collector as you never, ever, know what's going to turn up.

[Texas Rangers]

Wish I’d known about that market a couple of months ago. I was in Barcelona, my son was skating at the World Roller games for the USA, and our hotel was about a half mile west of the Placa Espanya Metro, a short walk from the market. Oh well, next time.

Great read about the Barcelona programmes.