Paul Skenes has been collecting baseball cards for over 50 years and in that time has amassed one of the largest and most valuable collections of cards in private hands. Now retired and living in Illinois, the 75 year old looks back with pride on the journey that started with childhood packs of cards and grew into a lifelong passion and source of historic sports memorabilia.
Skenes’ interest in cards began at a young age in the 1960s when packs sold for just a dime or quarter and collecting was a popular pastime for many American children. Among his earliest cards were those of iconic players like Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. Though common cards today, at the time they represented Skenes’ connection to the game and stars he idolized on the field. He would spend hours organizing his growing collection by team and player, carefully storing them in notebooks.
In high school during the late 1960s, Skenes began attending more games with friends at local ballparks like Wrigley Field in Chicago. The excitement of watching stars in person only deepened his passion for the history contained in cards. He began seeking out older vintage cards on the fledgling collectibles market and trading extensively with other collectors to grow his collection chronologically back through the decades. Some of the cards added in this period included prized finds like a 1909-11 T206 Nap Lajoie and a 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth.
After graduating college in the 1970s, Skenes took a job in finance that allowed him the income and free time to pursue acquiring rare cards from dealers and at sports memorabilia and card shows. The bubble economy of the 1980s further boosted interest and prices, though Skenes avoided more speculative modern investments and focused on building strong representations of the early years from the late 1800s onwards. His collection became particularly esteemed for its breadth of 19th century tobacco era cards, and stars from the deadball era before 1920.
Among the most valuable acquisitions of this period for Skenes was an almost complete set of the pioneering 1909-11 T206 series, featuring globally recognized names like Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and Honus Wagner. He was able to acquire the rare Wagner card, considered the “Mona Lisa” of baseball collectibles, for a then-record $110,000 in 1986. Other fantastic finds around this time included an unopened 1914 Cracker Jack Dube Wagon card box and a Piedmont 163 N.407 Nap Lajoie, the first baseball card ever issued. Having these seminal pieces cemented Skenes’ collection as one of the finest illustrations of early 20th century baseball cards.
In the 1990s, Skenes expanded his collection significantly by purchasing other renowned collections when several prominent collectors retired or passed away. He inherited complete registry sets and cards to round out his own, such as a pristine 1914 Cracker Jack series. By this time Skenes had converted much of his basement into a climate controlled “vault” to safeguard his cards, which had grown in value substantially over the decades to number in the millions of dollars. He hired a curator to help catalog and maintain the immense collection moving forward.
As internet auction sites like eBay launched in the late 1990s, Skenes pored through listings daily seeking opportunity. The increased accessibility of the trading market continued feeding his collection’s growth, as did benefiting from the next speculative boom in car prices during the 2000s. By the 2010s, Skenes had spent over half a century and seven figures acquiring what is widely considered baseball’s most comprehensive private collection, estimated to be worth $40-50 million today.
At 75, Skenes says he has no plans to sell his life’s work, instead intending to pass it down as a legacy of the national pastime to his family. Even now, he spends hours each week cataloging additions and admiring cards like his prized 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner, one of only 50-60 known to exist in pristine condition. His hope is that his collection as a whole will educate and remind future generations of baseball history from its earliest days. It is a collection that grew from childhood fascination into lifetime achievement, all because of a little boy with a passion for cards.