John Knox was an avid baseball card collector starting in the late 1940s. As a young boy growing up in rural Michigan, Knox would spend hours poring over his small but growing collection, learning the stats and stories of his favorite players. He was fascinated not just by the athletes on the cardboard but by the art and history of the cards themselves. This passion would stay with Knox throughout his life and career.
After serving in the military during the Korean War, Knox went to college on the GI Bill to study history. He became a teacher and baseball coach at the local high school. Knox continued expanding his baseball card collection in his spare time, traveling to card shows around the Midwest to track down vintage gems to add to his vast archives. Though just a hobby at the time, Knox was meticulous in how he stored, organized and researched his ever-growing pile of cardboard treasures.
In the late 1960s, with the baby boomer generation driving newfound interest in collecting, the modern business of baseball cards was beginning to take shape. Knox saw an opportunity to blend his love of the pastime with his entrepreneurial spirit. In 1971, he opened Baseball Card Collector Shop in downtown Lansing, one of the first dedicated baseball card retail stores in the country. Business boomed as collectors of all ages flocked to Knox’s shop to trade, sell and admire the dazzling displays of organized cards from all eras.
Knox used his shop not just as a marketplace but a football cards football cards learning environment. He gave seminars on card grading and authentication. He self-published an monthly newsletter highlighting the history of specific players and sets. On Saturdays through the 1970s, kids would line up outside the shop hours before it opened, eager to see what new items Knox had added to his inventory from recent card shows and trades with fellow enthusiasts across the U.S. and abroad.
The success of Knox’s store allowed him to really devote himself to his first passion – researching and chronicling the origins of the booming baseball card craze. He published three seminal books in the late 1970s and 1980s that became bibles for collectors worldwide: “The Baseball Card Almanac,” “Yesteryear’s Cards: A Complete Visual History” and “Swapping Stories: Tales from a Lifetime in Card Show Circuit.” Knox unearthed never-before-seen photos and information on early tobacco brands, memorable oddball issues, unsolved mysteries and more.
Knox became a go-to expert source for the news media as baseball cards grew into a multi-billion industry. He appeared on shows like “Entertainment Tonight,” “CBS Sunday Morning” and HBO’s documentary series “Baseball” to share his insights on the intersection of nostalgia, memorabilia and speculation. Magazines like Sports Illustrated and Beckett tapped Knox for his evaluations of historic finds and perceptive commentary on market trends.
All the while, Knox’s personal collection continued expanding. Taking up the entire third floor of his shop and housed in temperature-controlled document cabinets and display cases, it came to include some 100,000+ vintage and modern cards in pristine condition. Knox took great care in periodically upgrading lesser-graded examples to gem mint when a superior copy came into his possession. No request was too niche – he was renowned for his ability to produce obscure rookie cards or variations from deep within his endless archives.
Into his 80s, long after officially retiring from the shop, Knox still indulged his lifelong dedication, writing the occasional article, attending shows for research, and sharing his knowledge with a younger generation of serious collectors and sports card historians. He donated a significant amount of his personal archives to the National Baseball Hall of Fame library upon his passing in 2019 at age 87.
Knox left an indelible legacy as a pioneer of the hobby. Through his retail innovations, wealth of published works, eager mentorship and unparalleled personal collection, he helped transform baseball cards from a simple childhood pastime to a serious pursuit for people of all ages. Today’s multi-billion-dollar sports memorabilia industry would not look the same without the inspiration and insights of John Knox, the historian who never outgrew his childhood love of the cardboard.
