Newport County 1912-1989

PART TWO OF THE MEMORABILIA OF NEWPORT COUNTY

Press Photographs

The classic football "Press Photograph" is an
endangered species, this most enthralling of
collectables currently spends its life under
the very real threat of extinction, thanks to the
advent of the computer disc and digital
photography. Technology in the modern age
has rewarded us with countless
advantages and pleasure, rather sad
then that there will inevitably be
casualties lying in its path. Even
sadder for the photo enthusiast, is the
looming threat that the original press
photograph will be among those
casualties despatched forever into
oblivion.

I can scarcely think of a football keepsake as
invigorating and thought compelling as an
original press photograph featuring my beloved
Newport County. Those hard copies from
yesteryear are guaranteed to transport you
straight back in time to the “Oxo” days, like no
book picture ever could. The quality of those
black and white images, taken in all weathers
by our press agency friends over the years is
truly staggering, even by today’s standards. We
are talking about images from the 1940s and
1950s, in which you can see the
individual faces and expressions
of hundreds. To find your self
staring intensely at one of these for
a mind-numbing 20 minutes or
more is not an unusual reaction,
believe me.

The NCAFC press photograph comes in many
forms, they will feature everything from the
classic team group and individual player poses,
to sharp match action depicting past glories
and upsets. An individual "player pose" is
the variety that depicts the player in classic
striking pose, usually leathering the poor old
ball. The "player portrait" is the feature of a full-
on, head and shoulders image. They will also
indulge in ground shots , club functions,
mishaps, anything at all that the local rag
deemed fit to cover at the time. Sizes will
predictably vary from very small to extra large.

With regard to blemishes, a heavy crease will
attract obvious attention, and they can be
common in older examples. Press photographs
though, rather surprisingly perhaps, are the one
item of ephemera that is not necessarily
blighted by such an occurrence. Many pre 1970
images carry the deliberate creases, simply
because they are imposed by the newspaper
editor when sizing up the photograph for its
then publication. Many consider that these
"editors’ creases" actually enhance some
photographs, adding real character and
history. Likewise, the odd segment of
hand-writing too is not always a tragedy.
Many examples will carry typed
descriptions pinned lovingly to their rears,
this being the charmingly named "editors’
narrative".

Finally, values - general market prices
tend to be a little patchy; team groups at
around £8 to £15, perhaps as much as £25+
for early post war, portraits and poses from
around £7 to £10+. Match action, the most
common variety at £5 to £20+, depending on
club and era. They certainly do not attract the
prices they should, many can be obtained quite
cheaply which suggests it is an item that the
collecting masses haven't quite latched onto as
yet, however, I do firmly believe that their
desirability will increase in the years to come,
as they are going to crop up increasingly more
seldom, and the "photographic-prints"
of 2006 will never ever compare sadly.

It is with regret that I finish on a note of
warning. The digital age is sounding
the death knell for these exceptional
pieces of club history; shortly they will
become "a thing of the past".
Shockingly, it was recently discovered that
newspapers were even destroying their original
archives, rather than releasing them to those
collectors who care about preserving our
wonderful history. They chose instead, to
toss our heritage into a burning furnace, an
incomprehensible act of gross sacrilege, and
one that will be regretted. Everything stores
conveniently on a plastic computer disc today,
which is still relatively new, but in the years to
come, I have no doubts that original press
photographs will become the sought after
collectors item it always should have been,
with a tariff to match.

Books

For the avid bookworms amongst us, there is
a surprising amount of literature available for
Newport County , probably more than one
would initially envisage. Admittedly, we are not
talking about “more titles than you
can shake a stick at”, more a steady
stream of classic , club-themed
publications, with quality taking a
laudable precedent over quantity.

The majority of professional football
clubs down the years have issued the
coveted 'Supporters Club Handbook',
County being no exceptions, although
ours have been rather fleeting in their
appearances. The last issued was
the '1956/57' version, fairly common and still
easily obtained in 2006 for an affordable £15 -
something which cannot be said of its reclusive
predecessors. The older '1939/40' issue is
valued at a healthy £180, and would be
deemed 'rare' but for the even earlier
'1920/21' handbook which mocks that very
term – harder to find than a left-handed
spanner! Very few still exist , which would
explain its value of around £400 for an
example in almost any condition.

Our club is fortunate to be blessed with
several authors of note and none more
so than the highly respected , Tony
Ambrosen. The two "stat-bibles"
essential for any County fan, are both
down to Tony's dedication and obvious
love for the club. The hard-backed 'Amber in
the Blood', a comprehensive club history, is the
"must have" of any Ironsides book and valued
at around £60 today, less than 12 short years
after its 1994 release. In tandem, another
1990s publication, 'Ironsides ~ A Lifetime In
The League' (1991) is a similar classic, indeed
anyone who has read this amazingly detailed
"Who's Who" of NCAFC personnel will not be
surprised to hear that it took over ten years of
painstaking dedication to compile , although
valued more modestly at £10 to £20 due to its
sheer numbers. It is my firm opinion that these
two books have no equal. Tony was also
the co-author ( with Leigh Edwards ) on a
1989/90 publication entitled 'Newport County ~
The Facts & Figures Book 1912 to 1989', a
soft-back of lesser printing quality, but no less
sought after. This statistical history is difficult to
obtain today for less than £20.

Similarly tough to get your mitts on is Colin
Jeremiah's delightful 1999 publication,
‘Newport AFC 1989 to 1999’, which illustrates
the cover of every Newport AFC
programme in glorious colour. A soft-back
issue of quality , not to mention
being a programme collectors dream, so
bearing in mind its desirable content and
modest print-run , this is unsurprisingly
most troublesome to obtain and worth an
impressive £20 to £30. In contrast, Ray
Taylor's excellent review of our 1994/95
Championship season , an engrossing
diary entitled ‘ A Champion Campaign ‘ ,
was produced more plentifully, and can
be picked up for around £3 to £6.

The award for the highest print-run of any
NCAFC book would surely be won " hands
down " by Richard Shepherd's 1980 soft-back,
'A Season of Triumph'. A wonderful review of
the greatest season in the club's history, a real
classic that is still widely available from £5 to
£15. Journalist Shepherd, was also responsible
for two other club publications of note, the
1982 issue of '70 Years of Newport
County', a photographic club history now
worth £15 to £20, and 'Newport County
Football Club ~ 1912 to 1960 (A history in
old photographs)' , this being the most
recent (1997) of publications , still
available from the club shop for the cover
price of £9.99, and worth up to £15.

Those yet to be mentioned include a pocket-
sized handbook published in 1973, 'Newport
County Diamond Jubilee (Their history between
seasons 1912-13 and 1972-73)' , and 'The
Team That Died of Neglect ' which first
surfaced in the early 1990s. The former was
published by the Vice-Presidents Club, valued
today at £15 to £25. The latter , penned by
David Thompson , is another ( rather basic )
club history of poor print quality , never the
less it is rather scarce and worth £20 to £30.

Scarves & Colours

A fascinating insight gained from poring over
vintage, pre-1950s crowd pictures, is the rather
strange sight of what appears to be hundreds
of near-identically dressed men staring straight
back at you. All will no doubt be wearing the
customary flat cap of course, or at least
headwear of some description. To spot a “hat-
less” soul in one of these extraordinary pictures
is for the eagle-eyed only, to spot a young lady
is even harder!

The crowd would inevitably be made up almost
entirely of working class men of all ages, mostly
in caps, but some in bowlers, and usually a fair
few proudly sporting their military attire. All this
was commonplace long before football fans
began “wearing colours”, bar the odd sighting
of a Rosette for prestigious games perhaps.
The late fifties and early sixties introduced
‘colours’ onto our terraces for the first time, an
era when the woollen scarf in club colours
became a match day essential, handy for both
displaying your allegiance, as well as keeping
out the bitter winter cold. The first such types
were the classic ‘Bar’ and ‘University’ style
scarves. The former is now
recognised as “the” classic
football scarf, a concept that has
certainly stood the test of time,
proudly appearing at football
grounds in every decade since.

By the late sixties, the bar-scarf
had settled en masse, teaming
up with another item that would seem as if it
had been around for eternity, the Bobble or
‘Bob-hat’. This new found affection for bearing
club colours took a new twist in 1971/72 when
we witnessed the birth of the ‘Silk-Screamer’, a
revolutionary idea that saw scarves appear in
silk form, proudly boasting our club name for
the first time. These ‘Silk-Scarves’ as they
became known , were most unsuitable for
wearing, instead supporters would choose to
wave them, pin the to their bedroom walls like a
pennant , or as became the fashion in the
1970s , tie them rather anarchically to their
wrists – with a nice pair of 20-hole Dr Marten
boots completing the look.

The 70s were also famous for the introduction
of the ‘chequered scarf’, where Newport
County’s name appeared adorning a woollen
scarf for the first time, another design that
would seemingly never fall out of favour, today
it is still the football scarf of choice. University
and Silk scarves fared less fortunately, lasting
little over ten years each, although the former
has made a recent comeback thanks to the
demand for retrospective clothing. The 1980s
was the scarf’s lowest ebb, this decade saw
casual, designer clothing replace the DM boots
at Somerton, and anyone found sporting a
classic footy scarf would inevitably be cruelly
subjected to mass ridicule and forever be
deemed “a scarfy” , the 1980s equivalent of
the plague – Burberry, Fila and Lacoste had
now replaced the amber and black in our
enclosures. The ‘Trendies’ almost consigned
the classic scarf to the depths of history; it all
but completely died out for a while.

Football changed dramatically at the dawn of
the 1990s, just as we did with AFC replacing
County in our affections. The game was more
popular than ever, especially with the fairer sex.
This new age signalled the return of our club-
themed woollens , and thankfully their well
being hasn’t been threatened since. Our
scarves are highly sought after and rather thin
on the ground as most were produced in small
quantities - the early screamers (1971 to 1978)
will fetch £15 to £25, the 1980 version around
£10 to £20. Bar-scarves can be picked up
extremely cheaply as they are difficult to age,
and were mass produced in every decade.
The early NCAFC chequered scarves are
scarce; especially those from the 1970s that
carried the ‘Coat of Arms’ crest, these rarely
crop up for sale, and would fetch £20 to £30.

Some delightful scarves appeared in the early
80s, notably the ‘Coffer’ issue which had our
crest & name in tacky transfer form with barely
any tassels. Available around the same time
was the higher quality club scarf set in deep
orange and black. One version carried our full
name & crest; the other simply proclaimed us
as “Newport FC”. Any of these today would
demand £10 to £20. The AFC scarves post-
1989 are more plentiful, and generally worth
around £5 in their various guises - the
exception being the inaugural AFC chequered
scarf, worth around double that amount.

Pennants & Flags

The fashions of the day inevitably have a habit of
influencing which Newport County items are made
available to the souvenir-hungry supporter;
although one striking collectible that has
staunchly resisted the augers of change,
whatever the latest fad, is the classic
pennant. A simplistic idea which has
proved a real winner with football fans for
five decades.

The team pennant first appeared on club
shop shelves during the late 1950s and
early 1960s; although its roots stretch back
far deeper, most notably in nautical circles and the
US colleges. It was a collectible which had initially
surfaced years previously in football with the
traditional exchange by team captains prior to big
game kick-offs. For the supporters however, they
first appeared together with our new-found desire
for sporting team colours; Scarves and Bob-hats
alone could not satisfy our voracious demands,
supporters now wanted to display their treasured
colours period, not just on the
terraces. Salvation arrived in the
shape of a small piece of tasselled
cloth; a handsome wall ornament
that satisfied our incessant desire,
and, for the last forty years or
more, loyal supporters’ walls all
over the land have had their
occupants’ identity religiously
stamped on them courtesy of the
football pennant.

The item itself is a small, rather
non-descript piece of triangular
fabric or plastic; a hanging flag
which narrows to a point at the
bottom; its distinctive name is thought to have
originated from a combination of the words
‘pendant’ and ‘pennon’. Despite starting football
life with a stutter, the ‘hot-cake’ selling of World
Cup Willie pennants in 1966, had the nation’s
football clubs swiftly following suit. Our club
unfortunately were never the quickest to latch onto
to changing times, subsequently the earliest
Newport County pennants were distributed around
1969 in silk form; a design which bore a player
proudly decked out in County tangerine and white;
worth around £25 today in nice condition. There
have been countless NCAFC examples since, the
pennants of the 70s now typical of a charming, yet
tacky era, with that quality silk cloth finding itself
replaced by crude plastic. A 1977 issue in such
guise replicated the icon of player bearing club kit,
this nifty design produced to trumpet our return to
traditional colours is rather scarce and, despite its
cheapness, worth £15 to £20. A similar production
in 1979 depicted the new club crest, and just a
year later, a “Welsh Cup Winners” version carried
a picture of the cup along with our nice new
badge. The former, like its predecessor is seldom
seen today and worth a similar tariff, the
latter far more common due to mass
production and valued at around £12. Plastic
certainly didn’t equal great quality, but these
pennants simply ooze a certain charm; is it
just this sad individual who finds the tacky
1970s souvenirs so endearing I wonder?

At the time of that Welsh Cup issue, the
County went pennant crazy! The club’s
golden era of 1980 saw two more simultaneously
appear in our club shop, and their quality could
hardly have been more contrasting. Describing
them as a radical change barely does them justice;
they were twice the size, squarer in shape, and
produced in glorious silk finish with sponge-backed
rears. One version carried a large crest boasting
the double triumph of ‘79/80; the other featured a
series of miniature crests surrounding the larger
one. Both are highly sought, fetching
around £20. Not content with deluging
us with pennants, the club also issued
a spanking new club flag; a huge club
crest adorned a chequered design, a
natty collectable worth around £15 to
nab today.

We were back to plastic in 1983 and
like its older siblings; this crest-pennant
is valued at a healthy £15. Apart from
the ‘Supporters Club’ pennants which
will fetch anything from £10 to £25, that
was pretty much it for the old club. The
Newport AFC and ‘new County’
pennants, which have arrived steadily since 1989,
will fetch around £5 to £10 top end. The obvious
highlight being the inaugural AFC pennant, a
design that was identically produced the following
year with the added boast of “Champions”! The
recent “County v Carl Zeiss Jena” pennants would
be expected to rise in value due to their desirable
subject matter, around £15 in a few years time I
would guess. The Holy Grail though would
undoubtedly be a unique, one-off item, such as an
original “match-sponsors” pennant; very seldom, if
ever seen, with a near 3-figure valuation for
desirable, important matches.

Shirts

The football shirt is a sacred item. Not only is it the
shroud in which your team play, it is also an
essential garment for supporters to proudly wear,
announcing to all their allegiance and identity. The
replica shirt is a modern phenomenon; indeed pre
1980, it was almost unheard of unless you
supported a top club. The Eighties saw the influx
of the replica shirt, quickly establishing itself as an
essential club shop purchase. ‘Real’ Newport
County replicas were an interesting new
item when first introduced in August, 1983.

Before then, purchasing a ‘replica’ shirt
from the NCAFC Club Shop saw you
return home clutching an item that barely
resembled anything that the team had ever
worn [the gorgeous 1975 version
apart]. The truth was, you had just bought
a hideous orange jersey with insufficient
arm stripes and a massive 'sew-on' club
crest patch; all kindly supplied by the nice
people at Coffer. It was made of rough
cotton and a poor imitation of the real
thing. None of this tarnished your joy at
proudly parading around in
the aforementioned shirt however, we
knew no different. Most of us had made do
with ‘home-made replicas’, thanks to our
over-pestered Mums and Nans up until
that point. So the orange jersey was indeed ‘the
real thing!’

That summer of 1983 saw the launch of
Newport County's first official replica
shirt. A delightful, amber collectible
emblazoned with the famous “South
Wales Argus” sponsor. The black felt
crest looked different to the players’
shirts and the ‘Patrick’ logos were in the
wrong colour. Who cared, it was a
proper replica, one we could wear just
like our chums who followed
Manchester United and Liverpool. No
more being ridiculed in Nan's finest home-made
towel-line version. Two years later the shiny new
‘Spall’ replica was available too, and these shirts
became part of our life.

Our club has produced many weird and wonderful
designs since those early days, with shirts
becoming extremely collectible. Early replicas for
any club are thin on the ground today; a nice
example of that 1983 shirt, just twenty-odd years
on, will cost you around
£50. Even the “hideous
orange jersey” will fetch
£30 or more; hideous
maybe, but highly
desirable. Sadly, the early
replicas are the exception
rather than the rule. Most
of your replica shirts will
decrease in value the
moment you purchase. The
collecting of these shirts is
very much a labour of love,
which unlike badges for
instance, is unlikely to see your
investment grow or even returned. The
sole point of the replica is to display ‘your
religion’ on one’s torso, rather than to
tuck away and collect sadly.

Players’ shirts are a different matter, the
holy grail of supporters and collectors
alike. What could be better for the
average die-hard than owning the actual
shirt your hero wore? Clubs would often
wear the same shirts for years, pre
1970's, still using them in training long
after they had expired. The players
weren't permitted to keep their shirts back
then, so subsequently examples are
pretty much unknown for a club such as
ours.

The 1970's and 80's saw the shirts find
their way into the hands of players and fans for the
first time really, some wonderful examples are
owned by various private collectors. You could
expect to cough up £150 to £250+ for one
of the classic “Adidas” shirts that our
heroes wore in the 1979 to 1982 golden
era [pictured]. Likewise, later 1980's
shirts too, will fetch into three figures.

Particularly sought after are shirts from
the final league season, and
Conference year in 1988; these
command steep prices not surprisingly
because of the infamy involved. More
common are the players’ shirts post 1989, with an
inaugural Newport AFC match-worn shirt fetching
something around the £60 mark. Non-league shirts
sadly will never attract the same interest, or indeed
prices as those belonging to a league side. With it
being such a new phenomenon though, who
knows where those same shirts will stand in the
years to come?

 Match Tickets

 One of the fasted growing collectibles in the
2000’s is the faithful Match Ticket; an old
acquaintance of ours that just like the programme
has graced the game for as long as
anyone’s memory can recall. It’s rather
surprising then that most unlike
programmes, it is a collectible that
boasts a newly-acquired fan-base.

The match ticket hasn’t always been
appreciated for the charming ephemera
collectible it most certainly is; indeed,
until as recently as the 1980s, the
collecting of tickets and passes was
very much in the minority, especially
when compared to its fellow football
keepsakes. Towards the end of that
decade, the hobby began to grab the
collector’s attention wholesale for the very first
time; catching on to such an extent that today, it is
now commonly tagged “the
fasted growing hobby”
amongst the mass hoarders
of our football heritage.

The ticket appears in a
glorious range of shapes and
sizes, as well as varying from
the thinnest of paper to the
thickest of card. Produced far
more sparingly than its sister
product, the match day
programme, it is usually unheard of today for any
programme to match the valuation of a ticket from
the same fixture; the ticket
will almost always command
a higher price due to its new-
found desirability and
scarceness. The reason for
this is mainly that most will
have been cheaply discarded
by spectators who at the time
deemed them worthless. In a
nutshell, the programmes
tend to survive; the majority
of issued tickets however do not. Their value has
increased tenfold with their popularity over the last
two decades; for example, the programme from
our epic tussle with Carl Zeiss Jena would set you
back around £3 in 2006, a ticket from the same
game around £10 to £20. They rarely surface.

A ticket representing County in an ordinary 1980s
League fixture
will command a
price of £2 to 5
pounds; the
programmes by
comparison are
sometimes less
than a pound.
Rarities tend to be limited to minor cup
games, prestigious finals or matches of
particular infamy. The sky is the limit for
some of those as regards to expected
tariffs; they seem to increase every single
year as the hobby continues to grow.
1970s tickets can still be obtained
relatively cheaply, just a pound or so more
than those from hailing from the 80s,
although examples for Newport County
are rather few and far between.

Tickets pre 1970 are unsurprisingly far
scarcer, an example featuring the
Ironsides from any 1960s League fixture
would fetch around £10 minimum. Classics such
as our 1960 FA Cup tussle with Spurs can go for
as high as £35 or more. Other prime examples
include the Shrewsbury Welsh Cup
Final in 1980 (around £10 to £20),
the thrilling away fixtures in Europe
(£15 to £30) and the last away
League fixture at Darlington (£15).
Desirability and value is often
increased further if the ticket in
question is unused and complete.

Moving onto design, Newport
County stuck rigidly for years to a
tried and tested formula of a single,
thick card with printed fixture; the corner of these
quite often torn off by the gateman
as they bore no removable
counterfoil. Success in 1980 saw a
change to the thin-paper variety,
with an action scene backdrop
featuring the Notts County League
Cup fixture. This was later changed
to a backdrop of club crest, but
retained its format of removable stub
with all opposition printed, as
opposed to written, unheard of
before then at Somerton, bar the big
all-ticket matches. Season-tickets do not attract
similar desirability strangely; although most from
the 1970s and 80s are still valued at £3 to £10.
Older examples can still reach surprising price
levels as they seldom crop up.