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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