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Saturday, November 8, 2008

Under the hammer: One of the world's oldest football programmes expected to fetch thousands at auction

The rare single sheet programme for the 1892 match between Royal Arsenal and Gainsborough Trinity is expected to fetch at least £3,500.

The find is just one of the items being sold an an auction of sporting memorabilia by specialist auctioneers Graham Budd Auctions at Sotheby's Olympia showroom on Tuesday.

Graham Budd said the programme was an extremely rare find.





A football match programme which is more than 100 years old is to go under the hammer next week at auction.


He said: 'This is only the second one I have ever seen and I have been doing this for 10 years.

'It's a piece of really early Arsenal memorabilia and there's a lot of big Arsenal collectors around.

'It's being sold by a private collector but I do know he happened to acquire it from a family that had roots close to south-east London, where Arsenal originated.

'It had probably been tucked away in drawers or something and finally resurfaced.'

The 1892 match against Gainsborough Trinity took place only six years after Arsenal was first founded as Dial Square in 1886, before it later changed its name as well as its location.

Mr Budd said an exhibition of the memorabilia would open tomorrow before going under the hammer on Tuesday.

He added: 'Once we open the exhibition tomorrow that's when we get a better sense of the interest.

'If it comes out of its little file to be viewed that's always a good sign.'

This is not the first time a single piece of football-related paper could fetch a small fortune at auction.

Graham Budd Auctions previously sold a single sheet 1889 FA Cup final programme for £19,000 - a world record auction price for a football programme.