I started Sportscards Plus in 1966 as a young boy trying to pay for his Baseball card habit. Despite receiving an allowance each week which was totally spent on purchasing 1966 Topps Baseball cards by the pack, I wanted more cards. Living in St. Petersburg, FL where the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets held spring training, I found that the teams would sell you items through the mail that I could resell. I ordered yearbooks and programs from the teams and sold them in the Sports Collector Publications of that time (The Ballcard Collector, The Trader Speaks, Sports Collector News, Sports Collector Digest, etc.). Every penny I made was put back into buying more cards, publications, and memorabilia.
I also served as a “gopher boy” for the Cards and Mets during spring Training. Not a official employee but one who was allowed on the field to pick up bats and balls for the players. During the 3 year period from 1969-1971, I accumulated over 1000 autographs including Roberto Clements, Thurman Munson, Roger Maris, and Mickey Mantle (whoever the Mets and Cards would play against during Spring Training).
In the early 1970’s, I started buying vendor cases from various dealers and opening them to make sets. I would then sell the sets as I has the publications.
After graduating High School in 1972, I was accepting into the Coast Guard Academy and spent the next 4 years in New London, CT. I was still buying cards and having them sorted back home but wasn’t doing alot of selling. After graduation and over the next 30 years, I moved around with the Coast Guard, learned to fly helicopters, and started attending more National shows. During that time, I opened accounts with all the major card companies (Topps, Donruss, Fleer, and Upper Deck). Buying the products directly from the card companies allowed me to obtain more product to sell.
My first National was in the early 1980’s in Arlington, TX (think it was 1983/84) courtesy of Wanda and John Marcus who gave me 2 tables because I was doing all of their local shows while living in Houston TX. I also did all of the local Houston, TX shows meeting many National dealers. After getting out of the Coast Guard, I went to work for Stacks of Plaques in Ft. Lauderdale, FL becoming their Operations Manager. This gave me a great opportunity to meet many of the great athletes of the day such as Muhammad Ali, Ted Williams, etc. and getting more autographs. I was also buying lots of cards and doing more and more shows (from California to Chicago to Boston to Houston to Atlanta and places in between). I concentrated on helping collectors finish their sets due the tremendous problems I had finishing mine. Many times when I was looking for a card, dealers would point me to a box with various cards, not in year order, not in number order and in usually less than desireable condition. I developed binders that would have atleast 2 cards of every card in the set available for collectors to choose from in year and numerical order. along with a minumum condition of excellent or better.
In the mid-1990’s, the card industry had change tremendously by making more and more products that had little meaning to the collectors. I decided to focus on vintage (pre-1980) cards and gave up all of my accounts with the manufacturers. I concentrated on cards and memorabilia from players I could identify with (from Babe Ruth to Joe DiMaggio to Mickey Mantleand Nolan Ryan). I could talk to my customers about these players and answer questions that they had and thus provide better customer service
I was recalled to active duty in the Coast Guard in 1998 to serve as a type of Human Relations manager for the Coast Guard from Charleston, SC to Puerto Rico but still managed to do some shows. I finally retired in 2006 and started traveling the “show circuit”. I had been averaging 25-28 shows a year until everything stopped last March. At this time, I had over 2 million cards, thousands of autographs and numerous other Sports Memorabilia items. All the items you see on this website is just a small listing of what is available. If you are looking for something, drop me an e-mail and let me know what you are interested in. I will try and help . I have met thousands of really great people over the last 50+ years and have numerous contacts throughout the US. I deal mainly in vintage cards and memorabilia and everything that is sold on the website has been collected by my at one time or another