A walk in the park has turned into a business opportunity for a man with a passion for packaging.

Spice Girls crisp packets, picked up by the hundred in parks throughout the county, are selling like mad in the USA. The packets, featuring photos of the Spice Girls, are no longer available over the counter. But they are still making money for collector Steve Ferguson, who runs Haworth-based Yorkshire Relics Props.

Steve sells the 25p Walkers crisp packets for £1.50 to a dealer in the States, who flogs them on to fans. "I've been picking them up in parks, out of bins and off the floor all over the place," says Steve. "I've collected hundreds like that and sell them on."

Steve's doing the same with Pepsi cans which in the summer were released with a photograph of the Spice Girls. "They were not released in the States," says Steve, whose real passion is collecting cereal boxes. "It's money for old rope.

"I've kept a few for my collection because later on they will be worth a lot more."

Steve gave up his lorry driving job of 20 years to turn his collecting hobby into a business, which he runs from Bridge House Mills in Haworth. He collects all forms of pop group memorabilia, and has boxes of Bay City Rollers bubble gum and cards which fans paid 3p for in 1974 and would now cost a collector £5.

Andrew Hartley, of Andrew Hartley fine arts of Ilkley, says: "I have never heard of anyone making money out of old crisp packets but if he is finding a market I wish him well."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.