Idaho Man Has World’s Largest Baseball Card Collection

I’m told the collectible market for old baseball cards is fallow.  When we entered an era where computer programs could duplicate valuable cards, the bidding war over the rarest came to a screeching halt.  The last really big time card show I attended was sometime in the 1990s and, yet.  If you enjoy collecting for collecting’s sake you should click here.

An Idaho Falls man has the largest baseball card collection in the world.  He’s approaching 3 million overall cards (he must have a lot of duplicates!) 

When I was in junior high school I would often stop at the drugstore after delivering newspapers.  I would buy a couple of packages of cards.  Within a month it became clear there were a great many duplicates for players who weren’t big stars.  The top tier fielders and hitters were harder to come by but a large supply of duplicates could always be traded for that one special card.

One day while in 8^th grade, I was reading a Street and Smith’s college football preview and started scanning the advertising.  I found a warehouse in New York City that would mail me the complete yearly card collections.  Good fortune, I suppose, but it took the thrill of the chase out of my card collecting hobby.  Within a couple of years I lost interest in cards.  Today, my old collection is slowly degrading somewhere in a landfill.

Still, I’ve a great deal of respect for the men and women who still collect and especially the ones who sort and categorize cards.  It’s a good mental exercise and a healthy hobby.  For the guy in Idaho Falls, it helped him overcome a learning disability and fueled a passion for the game.