Lozza's Loot: Get on the ball with sporting memorabilia

And just like the smoothest 1970s DJ, I have created an appropriate link into the world of sporting memorabilia.

There are lots out there at car boots, antique fairs and charity shops which have a sporting connection.

Amongst the glut of things you can buy are football annuals, old style football cards, Top Trump football cards, old fashioned wooden rattles, footballs programmes, rugby programmes, rugby books such as old fashioned Rothman’s Rugby Year Books and Typhoo Football Cards- the list is endless.

This last item the Typhoo Football Cards came out in the 1960s and early 1970s.

If I recallyou would collect the tokens off the boxes of tea and then send awayfor the large card or cards of your choice.

The cards included a number of famous footballers of the day and also those who even now decades after retiring are still household names.

These include players such Gordon Banks, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Martin Peters, Alan Ball, Denis Law, George Best and Jimmy Greaves.

As well as the single photographs of players there are team photographs in the card collection.

They are a great way to recall these football greats and some cards are rarer than others.

Another golden football nugget is football players on Hartley jam jar lids.

Between 1971/72. the company had famous footballers printed on their jam jar lids.

The players are Best, Charlton, Moore, Ball, Hurst, Johnstone, Davies, Banks, Osgood, Bremner, Peters, Bell.

These are great to find.

A quirky items I came across was an Arsenal rattle.

This was an old fashioned rattle with wooden slats so when you turned the handle the slats rattled against the ruts-making the rattle sound.

I read up on the one I found and it came as a kit which back in the 1950s you would build yourself and in the case of the one I have the previous owner had painted on his clubs colours and even painted the team name on the side.

Other items like football annuals are two a penny.

Whatyou need to watch for is condition, are they clipped or unclipped (has the price been cut off), any tears, rips or any writing inside the annual and over all condition.

One of the annuals I snapped up was a Jag Annual from 1970.

What made this special was the owner of the book had as a child gone to a number of games and got the players he saw to autograph the photographs of themselves inside the annual.

Among the number of autographs in the annual is Geoff Hurst, England 1966 World Cup hat trick hero (long before he was knighted).

And the picture he signed next to was one of him scoring his third goal in the 1966 World Cup Final.

The Rothman’s Rugby Union Year Books are good to pick up as they give you a complete record of that season.

Also ifyou get the right years give you the fixtures, results and reports from the British and Irish Lions Tours.

It is good to read an insight to what people thought at the time about different issues as many as often with sport they are still being talked about today.

And they do become rarer as the years go by as many are soft back as opposed to hardback.

I hope ifyou go out and about you net a good buy.