Dan Knoll
 

Many old-timers will remember Dan, a great and early collector and dealer of game-used and other material who passed away a few years ago. I just watched the show "Collector's Call" On MeTV and Dan's daughter was on showing his definitive collection of memorabilia from the show "Survivor." I came in late, but apparently Dan had been a contestant on "Survivor" and then amassed his collection, which was assessed by an expert at 2.5 million dollars. Dan was so prominent in the early days of the hobby, often working with another early hobby icon, Dave Bushing, and then pretty much disappeared from the scene as far as I knew. He was a super nice guy who really knew his stuff, and I always wondered what happened to him. I gather he moved out of sports and into other areas of interest, as did Dave, I believe. It blew me away to see a show about him and his collection.

Thanks for the heads up. I have to figure out how to access Collector’s Call. I used to run across Dan and Dave frequently at Chicagoland card shows and flea markets in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Bushing was a nationally known expert/dealer on bats, mitts and other sports equipment. As I recall, Dan Knoll’s interests were much more broad. When running around a flea market, I would see Dan with an arm load of old board games and entertainment memorabilia. Both were a blast to deal with, but they ultimately gravitated to working with Mastro’s auction in some capacity as I understand it…. I look forward to seeing the show about Dan’s collection.

In the mid-80's the Cubs would replace much of their old wooden sets with plastic and sell off the wooden seats to dealers. I worked in Stadium operations at the time and was called in to work when the weekend Security guard failed to show up to work one Saturday. I was told someone was going to stop by and pick up the seats (there had to be a thousand of them) and when that "someone" arrived, it was Dan Knoll with a few rental trucks and a small army of helpers.

I had joked with him that I had not yet taken a seat for myself as most of my co-workers had already done and despite the fact Dan paid for each seat that was sitting there that Saturday, he encouraged me to pick one out and put it in my car.

I would see him at several Chicago area shows over the years and he would always ask me if I still have that seat.