Huge football collection kicks off in an auction series

It was in 1956 when a young Carlisle United fan began to collect football literature.

At first it was Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly and the Roy of the Rovers and Topical Times annuals. Today, close to seven decades later, football historian and researcher Phil Martin owns an archive of an estimated 10,000-plus items that is ranked among the best in private or institutional hands.

Next year it will be sold over several sales by collectables specialist Loddon Auctions, with the third day of the firm’s December 11-13 sale this year providing a 100-lot taste of some very rare things to come.

Martin, an early graduate in computing science and an IT specialist by profession, owns some of the scarcest of all football publications. While the collection has its share of programmes and trade cards, its strength is the annuals, brochures, club histories, leaflets and periodicals that have accompanied the game since its Victorian inception.

A regular buyer at the first sporting memorabilia sales that were held by Christie’s in Glasgow from 1989 and at Sotheby’s under specialist Graham Budd from 1998, Martin was also an early adopter of the internet as a search tool for rare books and ephemera.

Since the early Noughties he has worked with both the National Football Museum in Manchester and the Football Association at Wembley as a volunteer and adviser and has become the FA’s unofficial librarian.

The opening 100 lots have been carefully chosen by Loddon specialist Gary Arkell as a representative snapshot of the collection rather than its greatest hits. However, there are some trophies.

A cornerstone in any early football library is Association Football & The Men Who Made It, the history of the modern game in its first half-a-century as written by Alfred Gibson and William Pickford and published by Caxton in 1905.

Phil Martin’s copy is remarkable as all four volumes have dust jackets – something Peter Seddon, author of A Football Compendium: A Comprehensive Guide to the Literature of Association Football (1995) has described as “holy grail territory”. It included in the December sale with a guide of £600-800.

Set of 44 1880s trade cards by Briggs relating to Cambridge and Oxford University teams. Briggs of Leeds was a competitor with the better known card maker Baines in the mid 1880s. Estimate £1500-2000 at Loddon Auctions.

Pathé disc recording of the 1909 FA Cup final between Manchester United and Bristol City played at Crystal Palace, estimate £200-250 at Loddon Auctions.

Miniature booklet titled The White Hart Souvenir Of The Spurs Entry To The English League 1908, estimate £400-500 at Loddon Auctions.