Programme

New auction enterprise will specialise selling football memorabilia such as shirts, medals and programmes

One of the world’s rarest football programmes is for a game abandoned due to tragedy: the Munich air crash of 1958.

High sums can be paid for football programmes that were produced but never issued as with an unneeded example for the Red Devils' 1968 triumph.

The oldest surviving FA Cup, presented to the winning teams between 1896 and 1910 including Manchester United, Manchester City, Everton, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur, is to be offered with an estimate of £700,000-900,000 at Bonhams this month.

Wolves may now be flying high at the top of the Championship after decades of underachievement but nearly 70 years ago they were soaring to European heights, as football programmes up at auction demonstrate.

Love or hate Manchester United, it’s fair to say they do enjoy a bit of success. Although the past few seasons have been a relatively lean time, they can still boast 20 league titles, 17 FA and League Cups, three European Cups/Champions Leagues plus a Cup-Winners Cup and Europa League thrown in.

Eton College is now the new home of the world’s most expensive football programme.

Almost exactly a year after Graham Budd set a record for any football programme at auction he has done it again.

Setting a record for any football programme at auction, an official one penny match card from the 1909 FA Cup final between Manchester United and Bristol City sold for £20,000 at Graham Budd’s sale in association with Sotheby’s.

“This was the earliest Cup Final programme I’ve ever seen,” said Graham Budd (15% buyer’s premium), referring to lot 747 in his sale on May 9-10 in association with Sotheby’s Olympia.

THE most expensive single football programme in a June 20-21 sale held by Knights was a 1921 FA Cup Final programme, right, for the game at Stamford Bridge in which Spurs beat Wolves 1-0. It sold for £2400.

THE first outing for Sotheby’s associate Graham Budd Auctions (15% buyer’s premium) offered a large range of sporting memorabilia in a 885-lot sale held at Sotheby’s Olympia on June 9. Football was the most represented sport, contributing to well over half the total number of lots.

NEARLY 1300 lots were offered by Anthemion Auctions of Cardiff in an April 21 sale of sports memorabilia and among the soccer programmes, there was a bit of a shock when a 1945 programme for a Newport County v Chelsea match, valued at £30-40, was bid to £2600!