A RARE collection of Swindon Town football programmes will be going under the hammer this weekend.

More than 90 Swindon programmes dating from 1910 to 1945 will be up for auction at Lockdales Auction House, in Ipswich, tomorrow.

The memorabilia, which include some incredibly rare editions, were discovered in a house in London and they are now being sold at auction in Suffolk via an inheritance.

Due to a paper shortage during the Second World War, most programmes dating prior to 1945 were recycled, which makes a collection such as this practically unheard of, especially for Swindon, and some of the items may be unique survivors.

The 1910 programmes in particular are extremely rare and it is hoped that they will fetch more than £45 each at the auction.

Chris Elmy, cataloguer at Lockdales Auctioneers, said: “These programmes obviously belonged to a football fan who went to a lot of football games and not just for one team, there are a lot of home and away programmes from a lot of different teams.

“We have some other vendors selling on the day but the majority are from this one house.

“I think we have more than 600 programmes on sale on Saturday.

“We have about 90 in total from Swindon which are dated from 1910 to the 1930s.

“Because of a paper shortage a lot of the programmes, which were just used to mark the team, were all sorted out and used for recycling after the war.

“There will be some incredibly rare programmes in the collection.

“The Swindon Town practice match, for example, we believe is the only one of its kind.

“We have had some interest in the lots already.

“You never know how much they will go for, they have reserve prices of between £35 and £45 but they could go for much more than that.”

Any Swindon fans who want to get their hands on the programmes but cannot make it to Suffolk can visit the auctioneers website www.lockdales.com or can bid live at www.the-saleroom.com