RIP Sports Card Collector & YouTube Commenter, Rick Hart

Longtime collector and YouTube commenter Rick Hart passed away at the end of April.

When I first started on YouTube three years ago, one of my earlier and favorite commenters was Rick Hart. According to YouTube, he added 51 comments on my channel early on.

Rick even won one of my biggest giveaways ever, for the Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie card. I had remembered that he was from Maine and went to the same card show I attended, so I asked if he just wanted to meet there so I could give it to him in person, and he agreed. He was such a nice guy. We talked for maybe 5-10 minutes and really hit it off. Just two collectors talking about cards. He was the first subscriber I ever met, and I talked about it on that card show recap video.

Rick was a huge Atlanta Braves fan, and often mentioned them in his comments. “Dale Murphy should be a Hall of Famer,” he would say. He was a vintage baseball collector who loved Don’s Sports Cards Center in Portland.

I would go months without hearing from Rick, and then a comment from him would pop up. Or he would nudge me at the Portland card show and we would catch up.

Then last year I saw him and he was clearly not well. He said he’d had a rough year, health-wise. But he was in good spirits and gave me a gift of a raw 1964 Topps Carl Yastrzemski, which still sits in my Yaz binder. We talked for about 10 minutes and parted ways.

His last comment on my YouTube was on August 23rd, 2023, when he told me he’d be interested in Braves cards from the small collection I bought. I never heard back from him after, and didn’t see him again.

I thought about Rick occasionally over the next 11 months. I tried finding him on social media, to no avail. I actually wondered if he had passed away, based on how poor his health was the last time I’d seen him, and would Google his name + “Maine obit” to see. Morbid, I know. But a week ago, I got the confirmation I had feared.

Rick was only 61, and had been married to his wife for more than 40 years. He was a father and grandfather, and just a regular guy like you or me. But he was a collector and a contributor to our community.

His obituary mentioned his wife’s name, so I found Teresa on Facebook and sent her a private message. I wanted her to know that Rick was part of a community that cared about him. She was appreciative, and asked me if I’d be interested in looking at his collection at some point this fall. I told her that I’d be happy to. Rick once told me that he had 300,000+ cards, and only nine were in slabs. A very interesting collection, for sure.

Vermont Collection Update

After John Mangini called me “The Smartest Man On YouTube” for my marketing of this junk wax collection, I needed to respond with another video:

And on Saturday I mostly just sat and watched the Olympics all day with my wife, so I spent a significant amount of time working on player lots:

I’m really looking forward to rolling these out on a video in a few weeks, along with complete and partial sets.

Awesome Subscriber Trade!

Longtime subscriber vintage_guy71 traded this Jackie Robinson:

…plus some cash, for this Ernie Banks rookie:

Pretty nice trade!

This Is Not A New Attic Find

I really appreciate everyone sending me attic find articles and videos. It tells me that there’s still demand for this type of story and video, despite the low viewership for the series this year.

This one, though, is not new, despite it having a July of 2024 publication date. It appears that this is an aggregator that picked up an old story. One that I’ve covered before. You can tell because Joe Orlando hasn’t worked for PSA for several years, but the article says he’s the president.

Here’s my video on this find:

How Much Cash Flowed Through the National?

During my recent conversation with Chris Sewall, we briefly discussed how much cash might have been on the National floor at any time. YouTuber simon466cards took that challenge and did the analysis:

I won’t spoil it, but I think Chris was pretty accurate.

The Vegas PSA Repack Machine Is Worse Than We Thought

NEO Cards & Comics did a great video on the Vegas PSA repack machine that I talked about somewhat recently. In it, NEO discussed 8 cards that someone paid a total of $800 for, and what those cards are actually valued at.

It’s worth viewing, but I will tell you that the results are abysmal. Not surprising, but really interesting to see.

Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

This week I watched The Descent, a 2005 movie about a group of women on a caving expedition gone wrong.

The movie had a grainy look to it, which was surprising since it’s less than 20 years old. And the first quarter of it or so felt aged, with acting that left a lot to be desired. But the story was good, and the monsters they encountered in the cave were amazing. Quite terrifying, actually.

The problem, for me, came at the climax, when things just became silly. They went quite overboard with things.

Still it gets 3 stars out of 5 from me. Worth a watch. Not sure I’ll watch the sequel, though.

Channel Highlights From the Past Week

I had a great conversation with Graig and Darren on Midlife Sports Cards and their regular “Off Topic” series:

Attic Find Friday made a return, and once again didn’t get many views. Is it my titles? My thumbnails? Summer? Or are people just sick of these stories? I’m not sure. But as usual, the people who did watch it seemed to like it. Here it is:

John Mangini seems to like them.

My Pickup Of The Week

Back from private signing on the same day the women’s team won gold!

First Giveaway Winner!

As a reminder, I’m giving away these six cards, one per week:

I downloaded my growing subscriber list to Excel, wrote a random number formula for each email address, and then used a random number selector on Google to select the winner.

This week’s winner, the first of six, is longtime subscriber Jim Falkler! It’s always gratifying when longtime viewers or readers win. And Jim also happens to be a new YouTuber too!

Jim, please reply and let me know your mailing address and which card you’d like.

Links:

Baseball Collector Mike wrote for Hobby News Daily about a topic near and dear to my heart: collecting the Dick Perez collection, autographed. Mike’s collection is far more impressive and ambitious than mine. Amazing stuff.

Here’s the great story from my Sunday Clearing the Bases episode about the stolen Pokemon cards that were returned.

And the SCD story about $275,000 stolen from a dealer’s car at the National.