Choices, choices. Will you be watching the World Cup Final or the Wimbledon Men’s Final on July 15? The solution is clearly two TVs. As I write this, England are still in with a chance, but as of tonight, who knows? Obviously, if they make the final (we can but dream at this stage) households split between their football and tennis loyalties are likely to see more pressure to watch the former, especially now Andy Murray is no longer in the running at Wimbledon.

When it comes to sporting memorabilia, there is no competition, however. Football memorabilia, especially World Cup Winners medals, leave just about everything else standing. In 2016 Pele’s 1970 World Cup Winners medal took £280,000, setting a new record – in fact the Pele collection of football memorabilia sold for a total of £3.6m at the time.

By contrast, iconic tennis memorabilia can be had for relatively modest sums. Bjorn Borg’s racquet from the 1981 Wimbledon Final sold for as little as $18,500 in 2007, while Fred Perry’s racquet from the 1934 Wimbledon Final took £23,000 in 1997.

A London Underground poster from 1933 promoting the championship sold for £25,000 in 2012, but the top price to date is the $71,500 paid in 1992 for Bill Tilden’s 1920 Men’s Singles trophy for Wimbledon. Mind you, that’s close to $1m in today’s values.

What’s the auction record for a piece of Star wars memorabilia? I’ll bet anything that most people will now think it is the Han Solo Jedi blaster gun that sold for $550,000 in California on June 24. Guess what: not even close!

It’s certainly a better price than the $172,200 paid for a Chewbacca set mask in 2012, the $191,000 paid for Han Solo’s jacket in 2016 and the $280,600 for a fighter helmet from Episode IV, A New Hope, also in 2016.

Back in 2012 again, an X-Wing fighter model climbed to $221,400, while Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber from Episodes IV and V went as high as $240,000 in 2008 – surely one of the most iconic pieces ever to come up for sale, and quite a price bearing in mind that it didn’t actually work. The buyer was savvy, however, as they resold it for $450,000 just last year.

The prices keep rising though, from the $319,500 paid in 2011 for a Stormtrooper costume to the $402,500 another buyer paid for the TIE Starfighter ship, also from A New Hope. The Rebel Blockade Runner prop from the opening scene of the first film made $465,000 in 2015, but the prize goes to the R2-D2 prop used in several of the films, which went for a cool $2.76m in 2017.

How long before we see a double-digit price in the millions, I wonder?

Elvis Presley’s gold lion-head ring has just sold for £33,500 at auction, while his first Las Vegas contract, dating from 1956, went for £28,000. Both sold in the UK but to US collectors.

When it comes to the world of entertainment – rock and pop, films and suchlike – memorabilia follows the same rules that religious relics would have followed in the Middle Ages. Think about all those Renaissance churches in Italy, France and Spain with a splinter from the Holy Cross, a saint’s finger bone and the rest. The idea is that the closer you can get to the individual, the closer you also get to God.

It’s the same for items associated with the music greats, like Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Bowie and the rest. A signature is a good start; a signed album, concert programme or other memento is even better. Stage and screen clothing, unique musical instruments and highly personal items like Elvis’s ring are the jackpot. A Hendrix guitar from a famous concert would make millions: the 1968 Stratocaster he played at Woodstock sold to Paul Allen of Microsoft for his Jimi Hendrix Museum in Seattle for $2 million. There are even investment funds dedicated to this sort of thing. Eric Clapton owned four of the ten most expensive guitars ever sold. It’s all about the rock gods in the end.

Who wouldn’t want to take €7m for a single painting at auction? What a result!

That’s what happened in Paris earlier this month when the 1882 work Fishing Net Menders in the Dunes came up for sale with an estimate of just €3m-5m.

Why is this interesting? Because the artist was none other than Vincent van Gogh.

But hang on a minute, if it’s van Gogh, then €7m really doesn’t sound that much, let alone a mid estimate of around half that. After all, it was only last November that an 1889 landscape by van Gogh took $72m at auction, while other works have made even more. How come?

In a word, it’s all about timing. Some artists peak early in their careers and never recapture that initial brilliance, but most, van Gogh included, mature into what becomes their recognised style, focusing on subject matter that itself becomes iconic.

In van Gogh’s case, while he remained poor all his life and only managed to sell one painting in his lifetime – Red Vineyard at Arles – his artistic breakthrough came in 1888-89 as his late, vibrant and energetic if troubled style emerged, yielding blasts of colour and movement via strong, obsessive brushstrokes.

This is the art that takes the millions and that collectors will pursue relentlessly.

The painting that sold in Paris in early June dates to seven years before this. Highly accomplished, yes; but without the extraordinary genius of his mature period, and so, while still able to command several million euros, not in the same league as Sunflowers, The Starry Night or his astonishing late self portraits.