Stephen Fry once wrote about how he came from a household that showed as much knowledge or interest in sport as hedgehogs show in embroidery. Yet somehow, even as one who had spent his schooldays devising new ways of getting out of the dreaded ‘games’, as an adult he came to love watching all kinds of sport.

So it is with much regret that many of us will be missing Wimbledon this year.

Around now, we would normally be gearing up for the first bowl of strawberries and cream as we watched Nadal’s crashing serve take out some poor unknown qualifier, or debating whether this is the year that Serena Williams finally beats Margaret Court’s slam record.

Sport is a fertile hunting ground for collectors because of all  this, as well as the statistics, the records, the personalities and the sheer excellence and achievement.

Football, golf, tennis, cricket, baseball and many other sports have keen followings among collectors, with record prices rising into five, six or even seven figures on occasion.

Thinks of all those fans grabbing for the sweaty headbands, wristbands, tennis balls and – on rare occasions – racquets used in grand slam finals. Not only does this give them a connection with greatness; it can also prove a goldmine later on.

Auction houses will be allowed to re-open their doors to the public from June 15. What does this mean in practice? Well, I think above and beyond anything else, we must all use our common sense, especially if we are to avoid the feared second wave of the pandemic.

I think we can take inspiration from the way that supermarkets and others who have stayed open have been operating. It also means being careful with the way paperwork is handled, payments are processed from those bidding in the room when that goes ahead and, for our part, ensuring the health and safety of our staff.

However well we plan for this, doubtless unforeseen elements will arise to challenge us in what is, after all, an unprecedented and complex situation. So we will tread carefully. Patience will be key to everything we do, whether as service providers or on the part of those wishing to come and view items in person. For all the finger pointing and disgruntlement on social media with what has been going on and how the authorities have handled it, I have been supremely impressed with the forbearance and consideration of the public in general.

We will be doing our best to make sure everyone is safe and that a visit to our Fernhurst rooms is as enjoyable and rewarding an experience as it can be. And we will continue to provide the full live bidding offer online too. Around the country you will find other salerooms seeking to do the same. This business is here to stay.

The four Ds that lead to items being sold at auction are Death, Divorce, Debt and Decluttering. After what we have all been through since March, I suspect that Debt will be the prompt for a whole new slew of consignments to auction as people try to get back on an even keel.

As people scour the attic and the hall cupboard looking for anything that might raise a few pounds, it is a timely reminder of some of the most unexpected things that have come up trumps in the auction rooms.

My favourite story of recent years took place in France last year. An auctioneer was called to clear out the modest 1960s home of a woman in her nineties when she noticed a small wooden painting hanging from the wall above the kitchen stove.

It had been passed down through the family and the old elderly woman thought it worthless, but it struck the auctioneer as something rather better.

Her hunch paid off: is was a lost work by the early Renaissance master Cimabue painted c.1260 – only 11 other works by him are known – and it went on to sell for €24.2 million, making it the world’s most expensive medieval artwork sold at auction.

Occasionally you come across a story that goes to absolute heart of what it means to be a collector. One such is that of the late Arthur Muggeridge, a Royal Artillery veteran who accumulated a fascinating a collection of items linked to spying, counter-espionage and daring POW escapes during the Second World War.

Packed with the sort of items that would have inspired Ian Fleming as he wrote about the ingenious Q, the collection includes concealed weapons, map fragments hidden in dominoes, a string vest that could be unravelled to reveal a single piece of string to be made into an escape rope and even exploding coal.

These all sprang from the imaginations of the boffins of MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, a department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945 charged with supporting European Resistance networks.

MI9’s Q was Christopher Hutton, who built himself a secret underground bunker in a field so that he could work undisturbed. One of my favourite of his inventions were maps printed on silk (so they wouldn’t rustle) that could be disguised as handkerchiefs. Famously Hutton developed uniforms that could be adapted quickly to look like civilian clothing, and he even supplied a floorplan of Colditz Castle to the officers held there.

Muggeridge’s collection is a real rarity, and although worth close to £20,000, it is the history, brilliance and sheer audacity of those who dreamed all of this up, together with the dramatic wartime stories in which they featured, that make it a dream for any auctioneer.