Hello and welcome to my Arsenal badge web site.


The most active time for me, as far as going to watch Arsenal was concerned, was between early 1979 up to around 1982. The last Arsenal game I ever watched was in 1994. I suppose I really began to seriously lose interest when Arsenal did away with their lovely old crest and replaced it with the thing they have now. Why should having a new crest make any difference? Because to me the new crest was a visual symbol of the way Arsenal had changed and what they had changed into. Of course, as with any football team, players come and go but it was more than that. I felt that the very spirit of Arsenal was slowly starting to turn into something I could no longer identify with. Gradually the team was changing into one made up of players whose names I couldn't even pronounce and in my mind the new crest symbolised this. When Arsenal left their 'spiritual home' of Highbury for the new Emirates Stadium it was definately the final whistle as far as I was concerned. It wasn't xenophobia, it was something deeper and more difficult to grasp and explain. The foreign players on their own wouldn't have made any difference if everything else about the club had stayed the same but when it was all added together it just tipped the balance for me.
I know I'm not alone in feeling this. Arsenal fans I know that were far more commited than I ever was have confided the same sentiments to me.

I remember all too well the street sellers with their boards that used to line the route to Highbury and the badges they used to sell. Sometimes I'd buy one and sometimes I would stand there for a few minutes looking at all the different designs. They were real, good quality, solid enamel badges as well and, sadly, of a type that are not generally sold outside football grounds anymore - or anywhere for that matter. Of course, you can still buy badges outside a football ground on a Saturday afternoon but they're not likely to be made of real enamel. It's strange how, when you see something for sale, you think it's going to last forever and it's strange that it's not until a thing is no longer available, that you really miss it and badly want it.

I started collecting vintage Arsenal badges from the 70s and 80s in 2005, mainly using eBay to acquire them. I built up a tiny collection of around twenty or so and then I stopped. In June of 2008 I started collecting again and now it's turning into a bit of an obsession. I know that building up a decent sized collection of around 200 badges is not going to be an easy task - especially when the only badges I'm interested in are vintage and made of real enamel - but I'd rather have a small collection of what I want and like rather than a much larger collection made up of easy to obtain modern, new enamel badges. It might seem a bit pointless making a website just to show such a  small collection of badges but this website was also created as a means of helping me add to my collection with the aid of the Badges Wanted section.

These vintage badges remind me of the days when football had a real magic about it while the only thing you'd see on a players shirt, apart from mud and grass stains, was a number on the back and a crest on the front. These days, it seems as if football is more about celebrity and sponsorship than the game itself. Even the game seems to be played differently from how it did twenty or thirty years ago.
The badges also bring back memories such as my standing outside The Gunners pub on a warm late August - early September Saturday afternoon in 1980 with my mates (each with a pint in our hands) before going in to watch one of the first games of the season. The pub itself was heaving while the jukebox was blaring out the tune Tom Hark by the Piranhas. Funnily enough, the song went on to be unofficially adopted by Arsenal later on.
And memories such as going to a packed Wednesday evening game straight from working in a factory all day without going home for dinner first and feeling so tired as I stood there on that freezing terrace that only the cold and, of course, the excitement of the game was what kept me from falling asleep where I stood.

A glimpse of real football in it's glory days. Charlie George lifting the FA cup at Wembley in 1971. Pure magic!
I couldn't have a web site based on Arsenal without at least one picture of the great Charlie George himself.