T206 Wagner in Canada

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

While Angie began setting up at sports card shows in the States in the 1970's, his brick and mortar store on Barton Street dated back only to 1991 or so.

I need to scan some items for a post on my recollections of my visits to the store.

Okay! I've not been able to find any pictures of Angie's King of Cards store, but here's what I remember:

The store wasn't just a small cubbyhole. It was deep and roomy with the sales counter at the back. Neither was it overflowing with boxes of cards all over the place. Yes, he had packs of new product on his sales counter but what he was mainly selling was his doubles which were all displayed nicely by sports category in glass cabinets on either side of the store plus one down the middle front to back. These vintage doubles of his went back to the 1920's. More were Hockey than Baseball but he had a fair amount of CFL plus even some Wrestling as well.

I bought this unbroken strip of Hockey coasters that were included in El Producto Cigar boxes during the 1967 Xmas season at his store:



(Not one of mine.)

So cool! I just wish El Producto had issued several more panels.

I also bought a few 1954 Blue Ribbon CFL cards, 1956 Shredded Wheat CFL cards, 1959 Wheaties CFL cards and 1963 CFL Coins from Angie but don't ask me which since I no longer remember. Here though are some sample pics from my present day collection:











Overall though it's funny the things I remember from thirty years ago:

I know I visited Angie's store on 19 November 1994. I had passed up attending the Vanier Cup game at Toronto's SkyDome that day even though my beloved University of Western Ontario Mustangs were playing the University of Saskatchewan Huskies for the title. You see Western had beaten Saskatchewan handily every time they'd faced each other previously in the playoffs and I was confident Western would cruise to another victory. Well Western blew a seventeen point lead in the fourth quarter and had to march down the field with less than a minute to play to score a game tying field goal. Final score:

Western 50 Saskatchewan 40 (OT)

So I missed a great game!

I took my card collecting partner from 1963-65, Tony, to visit Angie at his store once or twice. On one of those occasions (perhaps the day before the 1996 Grey Cup game in Hamilton) Angie was dealing with a twelve year old kid who had $10 to spend on either a Pavel Bure or a Sergei Federov card. I clearly remember Angie saying to the kid "I'd go for Sergei Federov. Pavel Bure is up-and-down but you're not going to go wrong with Federov."

Tony and I of course kept straight faces and said nothing at all. When we left the store, Tony turned to me with a grin on his face and said "Yup! Old Ang sure can't go wrong selling the kid a Sergei Federov card for ten bucks!"

Then another time when I dropped in on Angie not long before he closed up shop, he suggested we go to Sam's Hotel & Tavern just a very few steps to the east so we could continue chatting about cards and sports. It was your regular working class bar and though it was rather early in the evening there were already two working girls in the bar one of whom was wearing a bright red dress. They weren't knockouts but they were alright. When it came time to order, Angie said to me "You know what beer I like these days? It rhymes with whores. It's Coors Light!" From his comment I drew two conclusions. Angie didn't like good beer. I mean I would have guessed he'd have ordered Labatt's IPA (my father's choice) or 50 Ale, Molson Export Ale or Carling Red Cap Ale but he opted for an American near beer instead. Secondly he didn't approve of the whores. (Being more liberal minded in such matters myself, their presence bothered me not at all.) So neither booze nor women tempted Ang. All he needed were his cards!

He regularly sneered at the frenzied collecting of the junk wax sets and some of the prices the manufactured "scarcities" fetched. He told me one time in 1996 or so that he did like the Hockey Pogs though! This was probably because Pogs targetted kids and not adult collectors.

Some years later Angie told me about an incident where the cops had phoned him to leave the house because they'd got a tip of a planned home invasion. The cops then apprehended two armed thugs who had pulled into Angie's driveway! This understandably shook Angie up. He said they were planning to kill him for his collection!

It was also at about that time (1997-2000?) that I asked Angie how he could derive any pleasure from owning the T206 Honus Wagner card when he was keeping it in a safety deposit box. Within about six months to a year he sold all his Baseball, Basketball and NFL cards to a big California dealer and closed his store.

I also remember the non-pretentious old school Bel-Air restaurant across the street run by a Polish couple where I used to get perogies while waiting for Angie's store to open at noon or so on Saturdays.