The Derby County Collection

With the anniversary of the 1966 World Cup Final just past, where England beat West Germany 4-2, we reflect on the trophy given to all Football League clubs afterwards, although not in solid gold. The original trophy no longer exists, having being stolen in 1983 in Brazil, who were presented with it after winning the World Cup for three times, and never recovered. As you may recall the trophy was stolen in London prior to the tournament and subsequently recovered by Pickles the dog. The FA (without permission of FIFA) secretly had a replica made of the trophy in bronze and was to be used in public places in case it was stolen again which would further embarrass the FA further. During the celebrations on the pitch after the presentation of the real trophy by HM Queen Elizabeth, the replica was substituted and many of the photographs taken on the pitch were of the replacement trophy.   How many of the 92 issued still exist ? Derby's is in the cabinets in the Main Reception area of Pride Park Stadium.

With Ebay increasing their prices and postage prices becoming ridiculous for a service that appears to be getting worse, it is clear that selling small value items isn't worth the trouble anymore. A typical card/ticket stub/teamsheet may be worth up to £2..if you don't offer free postage, noone will look at it and postage will take 50% straight away. Factor in Ebay fees, PayPal fees, envelope and petrol to get to a post office, it isn't worth the time and effort involved. So, I'm going back to the old-school method of a sales catalogue which will contain everything I want to dispose of. I will have a listing on Ebay that points to a download page for the catalogue which will have everything from cigarette cards, panini stickers, programmes, books, teamsheets, tickets etc and a 'sealed bid' auction for those unique and more interesting items. I know I'm not alone in my thoughts and I know there is an alternative being developed for certain types of memorabilia, but in the meantime I may look at ebid or Vinted.

That's another 800-ish photos scanned, marked and catalogued in the last couple of weeks. That brings me up tp 5,000 photos, 12,000 press negatives (and glass plates) to which I own the copyright and 1,100 slides. Obviously in the last 25 years, everything is now in a digital format, so these are quite unique. I've started putting some of the more iconic and well known images I own the copyright to on Alamy - but interested in any other ways of monetising this amazing archive.

I'm tempted to have a big rant with the establishment in the archaeological and heritage areas. Who wants to me to start?

The biggest challenges for our archivists/collectors are time as most are employed, space to store items, money and getting football club directors/ownership to want to be involved in the journey. 70% of respondents say they personally own at least one item of memorabilia over 100 years old, which classes them as antiques

Continuing our polls results...of the 8 top collecting areas, the least popular areas are badges, tickets and cigarette/trade cards...the most popular being match programmes, books, club-related documents and press photos. If popularity relates to prices, I would buy cards and tickets as sooner or later the demand for programmes will drop off as collectors look for other areas that are easier to store and appreciate in value more quickly

Continuing the results of our polls - 60% prefer to have a hybrid approach of permanent display area (that may change content regularly) and an on-line virtual museum, 64% have a partially completed catalogue of items; no-one claimed to have a complete list and 22% haven't started making a list, Excel or otherwise. As regards funding, 50% of archives are self-funded - clearly this cannot be sustainable and must put those archives and collections at risk.

A couple of months ago myself and Darren at Millwall Museum created a WhatsApp group for football museums, archives and collectors to exchange ideas , documents, processes and useful links. Since then we have people join from Exeter and Plymouth in the south, London, Ipswich in the east, Dundee in the noth and Portadown in Ireland and all points inbetween. We conducted some polls recently and will be sharing those over a number of posts. The Age Groups of people involved... 95% of people are over the age of 40. 39% are over 60 years of age. What this shows that there is a massive gap of younger people interested in football history, archives and memorabilia. 32% of the group are retired with just one person being full time employed by their respective football club, over 60% being in employment Nearly 80% of club archives/collections are reliant to one degree or another on private collectors. Further questions delve further into how much these collections are at risk. Just 8% say that their football clubs own their own archive. Lots more to come..it would be interesting to get museums/heritage professionals to review our findings and see how they correlate with their industry.

6 years ago tonight we were asked to support the launch of the Derby County Community Trust launch of the Sporting Memories group to help with those suffering from dementia and their carers. The evening was an invited audience of former star players from the 1970s, support agencies, carers and most importantly, those suffering. The EFL (English Football League) sent along the Championship trophy and we supplied tables of memorabilia and items from the Baseball Ground to support the event. Despite the required break due to the pandemic, our support for this project will continue, in person or by loans of football-related items (not only Derby, as we appreciate that, unbelievably, not everyone is a Derby fan)or monthly newsheet. Hopefully we make a difference. If your organisation wants to support either the Community Trust in their work or us, in preserving the history and heritage of the club for community use, please get in touch.