When details go live online this Friday ahead of its auction at Glasgow’s Trades Hall on 10 April, the 16-page publication created for the Ibrox club’s friendly against this week’s Europa League opponents Benfica in Lisbon on February 10, 1948, will be given a guide price of between £800 and £1,200.
“One of the rarest Rangers and indeed Scottish post-Second World War match programmes in existence,” according to auctioneer and expert in sports memorabilia David Convery.
Scottish football memorabilia enthusiasts predict that the program, printed during a time when paper was scarce worldwide, will attract a large number of Gers collectors and sell for a fair amount more than the reserve price, even with the spine taped.
The 1948 Rangers program Benfica match is anticipated to bring around £1,000 at auction.
Arsenal defeated Porto on penalties, a “magic night” that Mikel Arteta praised.
Early in the 1960s, it was given to Neil Brown, a young collector in Edinburgh, by his Sunday school instructor as part of an arbitrary bundle of programs.
The now 70-year-old Hearts fan is unaware of how such an uncommon item ended up back in Scotland after a game that took place approximately 2.5 years after the war ended and was attended primarily by Rangers supporters and officials.
“My Sunday school teacher brought in a bag of about fifteen old programs for me when she discovered I had started collecting programs when I was eleven years old,” Brown recalled.
Since I was only collecting as a hobby back then, I was unaware that it would have any worth in the future.
“I didn’t realize the importance of this specific program and how uncommon it might be until the 1980s, when people began to show a genuine interest in such things,” the author writes.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a variety of sports and music memorabilia, including football programs, comic books, magazines, vinyl records, and more. It’s gotten a little out of hand!
“Having owned such a rare item for such a long time has been fantastic, but I’ve been trying to downsize, so it’s time to let it go and enjoy it for someone else,” the owner said.
Brown got in touch with the auctioneers in January, and ironically, his highly valued program, which has a cover price of one Escudo, is going up for auction a few weeks after Benfica and Rangers reunited in the Europa League. Ahead of this Thursday’s second leg at Ibrox, the two teams are even at 2-2.
Rangers played their second foreign match after the war, the first being against the Combined Services in Hannover in October 1945. Their game at Lisbon’s Estadio Nacional 76 years ago was the first ever between the clubs.
In front of a crowd estimated at 60,000, Bill Struth’s Gers trounced the Portuguese 3-0, with goals from Willie Thornton and Jimmy Duncanson.
In a romantic aside, Hilda was employed as an air hostess on the aircraft to Lisbon for the match, which is how former Rangers player and manager Willie Waddell first met his wife.
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