Set of Spurs programmes expected to net £100,000

A one-owner collection of Tottenham Hotspur football programmes and related memorabilia is expected to fetch more than £100,000 sterling (€151,650) at an auction in London next Friday. Christie's football specialist Mr David Convery says: "This is the first time we're having a one-owner collection and it is a superb collection of Tottenham Hotspur home and away match programmes.

"It is one person's collection of programmes from as early as 1909 up to the 1989-1990 season."

While some other teams such as Arsenal and Manchester United feature in the auction, by far most of the collection is Spurs-related. And most of the items to go under the hammer are humble football programmes; the kind of thing that many people might have thrown away without a second thought.

The owner's father started the collection and his son, believed now to be "between 35 and 50" kept it up. "He was just obviously bitten by the bug as well," says Mr Convery.

From the pre-first World War period, there are two yearly bound volumes of programmes (1912-13 and 1913-14), each of which are expected to fetch £2,000 to £3,000. They include every match programme from the home games. At the end of each season, they were sent to the binders "and they're basically in A1 condition because they haven't been touched". There is also a complete run through the 1930s and some post-war bound volumes as well, he says.

So, might we all stop saving for our pensions and start collecting football programmes instead? "Well, not these days," says Mr Convery. "Yes you could collect them but the majority of people do now and have jumped on the bandwagon."

In fact, even programmes from the 1960s - although they're almost 40 years old now - generally aren't valuable. They don't tend to be worth a great deal of money, he says.

"We get a lot of enquiries from people who have programmes from the 1950s or 1960s and the World Cup as well, which is not worth a great deal of money these days. It's certainly worth something but there are so many going around at the moment, they're not holding any value at all. Under £50, that sort of figure. But there are one or two collections post-1960s that are very, very collectable, he says.

The more valuable ones tend to be matches where something unusual happens, such as if a match is cancelled. "Now that's something unusual but then again it wouldn't be worth money for a good number of years," Mr Convery says.

For example, in the forthcoming auction a rare and unusual 1962-63 programme features Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. The match was organised at the last minute after heavy snow on January 26th, 1963. The programme is a typed single leaf of plain white paper and is estimated at £500 to £700.

A home match programme for the game against Lovell's Athletic played at White Hart Lane on 18th September 1950, with a complete run of League programmes from 195051, is expected to fetch £1,000-£1,500.

Another complete run of League programmes for the 1960-61 season when Spurs became the first club this century to win the double of the League Championship and the FA Cup is estimated at more than £300. u£00. Meanwhile, 10 yearly bound volumes from the season 1929-30 to 1938-39 each carries an estimate of £800 to £1,500.

It is possible that by collecting programmes today they could be valuable for our grandchildren but, as Mr Convery says, by then the people now collecting them will "have gone to play the big football match in the sky".