There’s a Russian guy called Vladimir who flies to London every year to watch his beloved Chelsea at the Bridge. After negotiating security, he meets a guy called Terry in a car park near Heathrow. Terry and Vladimir have known each other for years. Vladimir has bundles of cash and Terry has a van full of merchandise that is available in batches of a hundred. After Vladimir samples some of the goods and the pair engage in a quick negotiation, hands are shaken and merchandise is exchanged for cash. Everyone is happy. Welcome to the fanatical world of football pin badges.

Terry stores his merchandise in his garage in deepest Oxfordshire, in hundreds of those small blue boxes you usually see in DIY stores full of nails and stuff. Terry’s boxes are labelled with quintessentially English place names such as Bridgwater, Lyme Regis and Chichester, and each one is full with metal pin badges in plastic wrapping.

He has always been a collector. It started when he was a non-league footballer in the Hellenic League, picking up badges of the teams he played against. He played on a Saturday, then again on Sunday and even served as chairman at the wonderfully named Beacons Bottom while he was still playing. He wanted to get a badge made for his club and that’s when Terry’s life changed forever. He contacted a badge seller he had become friends with, a chap called Toby.

Terry’s badges fill a wall in his garage in Oxfordshire. Photo by Jon Barmby

Toby was a Wealdstone supporter who also ran the club shop. His path to becoming a collector and badge maker began with his dog, Mick. “I used to take him on the supporters’ coach to away games,” says Toby. “After getting him a blue coat and a Wealdstone ‘silk’ scarf, he became established as our mascot. I decided to try and buy an enamel badge on our various trips around the country to put on his coat as a memento of our visit. Thus the collection started.

“When Mick passed away a few years later, I decided to sell the badges off his coat in the club shop to help raise funds for them. It was also around that time that I decided to produce my first ever Wealdstone badge. An official from one of our opponents, Boston United, saw my production, liked it and asked if I could produce a badge for their club. It all went from there.”

Toby, like Terry, made one badge and quickly found he was being asked to make more and more. What began as a hobby alongside his full-time job as a cabinet maker soon became much more. He was supplying a number of clubs in the Combined Counties League with their own badges and then, in 2002, a newly formed club were admitted into the division who were going to bring thousands of fans (and customers) with them.

Terry poses beside his big AFC Wimbledon flag. Photo by Jon Barmby

“I’d always had a soft spot for the original Wimbledon,” says Terry, “because they were the underdog, and everyone loves an underdog. So when AFC Wimbledon was set up, I went to the first match at Sutton and started selling match badges at their away games, because I had built up a relationship with all the other teams. A group of fans set up a mobile club shop called the ‘Wombalance’ and they asked me to make some more badges for them. I started going to pretty much every game and, as a result, me and my mate Tav have been supporting them ever since.”

Terry has produced a badge for every Wimbledon fixture over the last 17 years and he has a frame for each season featuring them all. These are genuine pieces of football history and he looks absolutely delighted when he tells us that each frame will be on display at the dedicated museum at Plough Lane when the Dons return to their home at the start of next season.

As with all collections, it’s the anomalies that produce real affection and memories. Like the Rushden & Diamonds badge for an FA Trophy match that never happened because Wimbledon were kicked out of the competition for fielding an ineligible player. Or the badge for Chester City game that never took place because the northerners had been expelled from the league.

“Obviously those, in particular, are very rare,” smiles Terry as he proudly puts them back on the shelf, all part of a collection encompassing well over 4,000 badges. They are so many he can’t even show us all of them, most of his hoard is housed in the loft of his converted garage, just above our heads. One badge that hasn’t made it into his collection was an old one for Thames FC. Considered one of a kind, it was recently listed on eBay for £5,000. These guys don’t muck about.

Retro pin badges. Photo by Jon Barmby

Each badge in his collection has a story. One of Toby’s favourites was made in 1997 when Wealdstone were leading the ICIS League Division Three. In the run-in to that season, Toby took a gamble hoping his side would win the league, but after a tricky end to the campaign, Wealdstone still had to beat neighbours Northwood on the last day to clinch the title. Toby spent the majority of the game nervously fondling a bag of badges, which very nearly ended up in the bin after a Northwood equaliser.

Luckily for him (and his bank balance), Wealdstone came back to win it. After he had sold loads of badges during the subsequent pitch invasion, he visited the players in the champagne-soaked dressing room to give them theirs. Toby has 58 different Wealdstone badges, which is a lot for any team, let alone a non-league club. Oh, if anyone has one from the 1950s with “LIFE MEMBER” in a scroll underneath the club badge, he would very much like to hear from you.

Whatever the weather, both Toby and Terry man a stall at their respective clubs every other weekend. Football pin badge collectors have their own community, their own way of doing things. Outsiders might scoff and sneer, but when you collect that doesn’t matter, it’s all in the thrill of the chase.

Terry’s badges for sale. Photo by Jon Barmby

Vladimir is far from the only Russian Terry deals with. He also supplies a shop in Moscow called Worldwide Football and their bestselling badges are the English non-league ones. During our short visit to Terry’s office, he receives an email from a regular customer in Malta, who sends him a list of badges for clubs from the lowest reaches of the non-league pyramid every single month. The internet has revolutionised the industry. Terry is in daily contact with his factory in China and people can now buy badges digitally because cheques (a preferred method of payment for the more mature customer) cost money to deposit these days.

More and more people are going on “ground-hops”, which essentially involve football clubs in a specific region changing their fixtures and kick-off times over a weekend so that fans from home and (increasingly) abroad can visit as many grounds as possible in a day.

Terry is involved with Groundhop UK and is currently preparing an order for an eight-game weekend for the Western League in a couple of months, meaning he gets to make new badges for new clubs that are eagerly snapped up by keen collectors. It also means he has to update what he calls “The Bible”, a huge ring binder that serves as a directory of every non-league badge ever made, all in alphabetical order, each one with a picture, and a specific reference code. It’s incredible.

The Bible. Photo by Jon Barmby

This labour of pure love is a result of years of hard graft and unbelievable enthusiasm from the members of the Association of Football Badge Collectors, who submitted each entry. The club stopped officially updating the bible five years ago, but that wasn’t going to stop someone as dedicated as Terry, so he now maintains his own online. It’s all there at a click of a button and you can get utterly lost just gazing at the badges, each with its own style, design, own story and history. Why do Harrogate Railway Athletic have a beaver on the badge? Why is there a team called Bristol Telephones? And why do Holyport have a hippo on their badge?

It’s hard not to be impressed by the passion and love Terry and Toby have for what they do. It is intoxicating. There is a reason people are buying vinyl records again, or spending money on a quarterly football lifestyle magazine (thank you, by the way). Having a physical product in your hand gives you an immediate emotional attachment. It allows you to pause and consider; a little respite in this hectic, fast-paced, screen-dominated world.

With football programmes seemingly on the way out, maybe the humble football badge will take over as the memento to mark yet another day out at the match. Chances are these badges will have passed through Toby or Terry’s hands. And, if they haven’t, they soon will.

• This article appeared first in Issue 19 of MUNDIAL

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