I met the white Frank Thomas yesterday

[mintacular]

Thought I would share this here as I did on the eBay forum (too lazy to rewrite ) Any experiences/anecdotes about Frank Thomas would be neat to hear. Thanks, Pat...

I met (the white) Frank Thomas yesterday at a card show yesterday and it definately made my day since I only had sales of $100 Anyway, I'm mostly a collector but have done a bit of selling online here and also set up as a "dealer" every couple months for a regular show that I do at a VFW in McKees Rocks, a small town near downtown Pittsburgh.

So yesterday, around the middle of the show (there were about 10 dealers and only 25 other attendees the whole day), I was bored so walked over to the guy who organizes this show and he introduced me to an elderly gentlemen sitting next to him as "Frank Thomas". I thought "Wow", I have a baseball card of you...! We talked for a while and then he mentioned signing a card for me. I went to my table and rummaged through my one box of mid to low grade vintage and 'shabang!' I had a '58 of him. So I went back and got it signed (the only signed card I own).

We continued talking and apparently he is a big-time collector. We went back and forth about what sets we are collecting and he and I both are working on a '52. I asked him which ones he needed and found it neat that he rattled off the 11 names he needed (I think most were high numbers, but not Mays or Mantle...). He took my name and told me he knew of a nice guy in Oregon who he would send my address to so and this Oregon dealer would help fill my set for a reasonable price. Pretty funny, but I guess pre-internet days you had to know people to get sets filled and I think he was trying to help me out...

Anyway, that's my Frank Thomas story, hoping to see him again at another show and ask more about his playing days with Clemente, Maz., etc. I guess he was a pretty good Pirate back in the day, the back of his '58 says he was the leading hr and rbi guy for 5 seasons for the Pirates. Here is a pic of my auto'd card:

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[FUBAR]

did you guide him towards this fine forum?

[mintacular]

I don't think he knows what a compooter is. According to him he has 2 near complete '52 sets. I asked condition, "Are your cards nice, worn, etc?" And he said something like they were "mint". He asked me to look up the '52 set in my beckett, and the '53 (another set he has complete). I quoted the NM price and what a lower grade would go for. He told me that he had even much more back before his wife threw them away when he moved, and also a fire destroyed part of his collection. He said something about how cards could've put his 4 kids through college.

That said, he said he replaced most of them during the 90s...

[Chris-Counts]

That's a great story!

[mintacular]

Glad you liked it...What made it best is to learn that Frank Thomas is a card collector too, not just a ballplayer who was there to sign, etc...

[Wite3]

Big fan of Frank...here is a similar story from nearly 15 years ago. As many of you know, I am a member of OBC, an online trading club (and arguably the first online vintage trading club). Another member of OBC and I attended a small mall show in Fallbrook, CA. One of the signing guests was Frank Thomas. After meeting and talking with him a bit, he asked if I wanted to have him sign anything. I told him I did not have anything for him to sign. I explained to him that I do not do that but I prefer to shake hands. I explained that he shook hands with Hank Aaron, who shook with Mantle, who shook with Dimaggio, who shook with Ruth, etc. It was like touching history for me (I know it sounds weird but that is how I was brought up). BTW, Frank had one of the biggest hands I have ever seen. After the show we were hanging around the food court and he walked up to us and started chatting. He invited the two of us to coffee while his wife shopped in the mall. We sat down and for the next hour he told us stories of his playing days including the four HRs in a row, All-Star games, and favorite current players (if I recall he liked Chipper Jones and Cal Ripken). He told us the story of the fire and his wife throwing some of them away and we exchanged addresses. Frank became an honorary member of OBC and we helped rebuild much of his collection over the years. There was a short Sports Illustrated article that came out around that time that mentioned his collection, fire, and help with rebuilding. He always included a nice thank you note with whatever was sent to him. He was one of the nicest major leaguers I had ever met. He is a class guy all the way.

Joshua