By: Amar Shah
"You can't drink baseball cards," Ken Neill says about his years collecting everything from wine to coins to comic books.
The former journalist and magazine publisher did say baseball cards were responsible for helping him buy a car, though.
It was a brand-new 1980 Subaru wagon that his entire family had driven at some point for 45 years, including his daughter Reilly. But baseball cards didn't just create car money. They also supplied a lifetime of memories for this father-daughter duo.
As a kid, Ken grew up in the Boston area. He started collecting in the 1950s buying his first cards when he was seven or eight. The packs of cards that included bubblegum hooked him.
Growing up, Ken worked as a newspaper boy and his dad worked for the MTA after serving in the military during World War II, during which time he worked in a factory that made large valves for submarines.
But even being in Boston, his dad wasn't a Red Sox fan. It was the Boston Braves that he regularly went to watch prior to their relocation to Milwaukee after the 1952 season.
"He really got mad when the Braves moved. So he had to begrudgingly take me to the Red Sox games, whether he liked it or not. It was my dad who took me to Fenway Park five or six times a year," Ken recalls. "My first actual game was 1954 or ‘55, when I would have been seven."
Ken's collection featured numerous pre-war cards along with relics from the 1950s and 60's including some notable pieces in the '55 and '56 Topps sets
Ken attended Yale University on a scholarship where he studied history. Upon graduation, he became a history teacher and headed to rural Ireland to take a job. His grandfather had been born in Ireland, and he was able to gain citizenship. He also attended Trinity College in Dublin where he earned his master's degree. Eventually, this is also where Reilly was born. Maybe it was the luck of the Irish.
Still, Ken ended up in Memphis as a freelance writer and started his way up the journalism ladder, eventually becoming founding publisher of the Memphis Flyer and the emeritus CEO of Contemporary Media, Inc.
But collecting was always in his genes.
"He didn't just collect baseball cards," Reilly says. "He collected stamps. He collected coins. He collected comic books, which his three daughters destroyed. Unfortunately, they were all the Walt Disney Classics."
Then Ken met a man named Mike at a baseball card store in Memphis.
"We met where people would gather in one of the rooms in the library and chit chat, and we became great friends," he says.
They devised a plan to advertise for baseball card collections in rural towns in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
"You would go somewhere like Mountain View, Arkansas, or Paris, Tennessee,” Ken recalls, “and put a full-page ad in the local paper saying, 'Do you have some big old baseball cards lying around? Come to the Holiday Inn and we'll be there from nine to five on Saturday.'"
They would split the cards after the purchase. One specific case, Ken recalls, is when he met a man near the Tennessee River in West Tennessee.
"One guy called back to the ad and said, come by at five o'clock. And I'll never forget this one. It was a big house on the lake, and the entire dining room was 30 feet long. And we opened the door to the house and there was nothing but stacks of baseball cards. He had everything from the '50s. And, of course, we were splitting it 50/50. So what we would do is we'd go to some beer joint, and then separate each thing.”
The REA team flew to Ken's house to get a first-hand look at his massive collection that included numerous card boxes and binders
But it wasn't until years later, when downsizing and moving to another home, that Reilly and Ken realized that he had amassed quite the collection.
"I initially found a few albums of the cards in my dad's study at home, but they were covered in dust," Reilly says.
Ken kept a storage unit, too. But when Reilly looked for the cards, something was wrong.
"I did see the original massive filing case that he kept the cards in, but it was empty," she recalls. "I thought maybe they were gone. But then I found four massive boxes of baseball cards. I mean, massive like those extra-large storage unit boxes."
Reilly contacted REA and copiously went through her father’s collection with the team, including full sets such as 1953 Topps and 1950 Bowman.
Ken’s collection even included a pristine 1970-1971 Topps Pete Maravich rookie card.
While Ken did pass some of his treasured cards to his grandson, many are heading for REA’s Spring 2024 Auction that runs April 5-21.
Ken Neill's 1970 Topps Pete Maravich rookie card that was found in a cigar box
Even as Ken contemplates parting with some cards, his passion for baseball remains unwavering. A pioneer in rotisserie baseball during the 1980s, this marks his 37th season playing, with plans for another round in the upcoming year.
"My little sister was in labor," Reilly remembers, "The draft was going on and we could not reach him. When he came out, he had a grandson."
In a world where you can't drink baseball cards, we raise a glass to Ken Neill.
Cheers.
Amar Shah is a multiple Emmy-winning writer and producer who has written for ESPN.com, NFL.com, The Wall Street Journal, The Orlando Sentinel, Sports Illustrated for Kids, Slam Magazine and The Washington Post. In the 90s, Amar was a teen sports reporter and got to hang out with the Chicago Bulls during their golden era. He even landed on the cover for Sports Illustrated for Kids with Shaquille O’Neal. His debut novel "The Hoop Con" comes out on March 5, 2024 with Scholastic. You can preorder here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-hoop-con-amar-shah/1143287376?ean=9781338840315