Tim Banazek ‘94 is the owner of likely the largest collection of sports cards in the world. Now, he wants to share his joy with everybody.

Tim Banazek ‘94’s collection is almost unfathomable. Upon entering a nondescript building off the highway to the southwest of Richmond, visitors step into a showroom and are greeted with a treasure trove of sports memorabilia. Signed baseballs, bats, helmets, jerseys, figurines, plaques, and—in huge volumes, everywhere you look—sports cards.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With a look of barely contained glee, Banazek opens a door to reveal the main storage area of the facility, a huge room that is filled wall-to-wall with at least 20 million sports cards.

There are shelves and safes packed with banker’s boxes and binders, all containing decades worth of sports history. Some cards remain in their original packaging, completely unopened for 30 or 40 years. It’s impossible to move through the space without immediately bumping into something remarkable. A box filled with Michael Jordan cards over here, another one filled with Wayne Gretzky over there. In protective sheaths, rookie cards for Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron.

Much of the collection (and Banazek’s passion) centers on baseball, but it also includes football, basketball, hockey, soccer, NASCAR, and professional wrestling cards. Even beyond sports, there are first-edition cards from Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Star Wars.

Banazek acquired this massive collection almost entirely from a single source. Through word of mouth, he purchased what is likely the largest collection of sports cards in the world from a seller who wishes to remain anonymous. As a passionate collector, he still can’t believe his luck. Now, he’s plotting on how best to share his ultimate score with the world.

Youthful Passion

Banazek began his collector’s journey early. As an 11-year-old, he and his father made a trip from their native Syracuse, N.Y., to Olympic Stadium in Montreal for the chance to see Pete Rose play against the Expos. Along the way, they stopped at Zellers, a Canadian department store. It was in the Zellers where the impressionable young Banazek got his hands on a card of Hall of Famer Tim Raines.

“When you’re 11 years old, that has a huge impact,” Banazek said. “All of a sudden you’re like, ‘oh my God, this is my favorite. This is the greatest thing in the world.’ And I fell in love with Tim Raines. I fell in love with the Expos, and they became my favorite team.”

Now, among his enormous collection, Banazek is the owner of an entire stack of Zellers Tim Raines cards. They’re worth maybe a dollar each, but are priceless to Banazek, who was able to share the nostalgic find with his father before he passed away.

Banazek’s hunger for collecting waned as he went to college. After playing two years of junior college baseball, Banazek transferred to Randolph-Macon to pitch for head coach Gregg Waters, who he described as a father figure. While at RMC, he earned a B.A. in English, met his wife Talley ’92, and formed lifelong bonds.

“My favorite thing about Randolph-Macon is unquestionably Barclay DuPriest,” said Banazek. “I was very close with her son that she lost, Tad. When everybody was going home for Easter, I would go over to his house and stay.”

After graduation, Banazek worked for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in distribution and advertising. From there, he went to a magazine called Tuff Stuff. In the great irony of his career, the hobby publication focused on trading cards and collectibles. “Do you want to know what’s funny? I didn’t even really think about collecting,” laughed Banazek, who missed out on the opportunity to claim some Kobe Bryant rookie cards in 1996.

In 1999, Banazek started his own company, ISC Sales. He and his business partner started out by selling Pokemon cards and Beanie Babies to convenience stores, then expanded into distributing as-seen-on-TV products to Walgreens. The business and its offerings have grown, along with its customer relationships, turning ISC into a successful venture, and allowing Banazek to fund, as he puts it, “crazy things.”

Opportunity Calling

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Banazek started to rekindle his childhood love of collecting sports cards. In 2021, he posted on Facebook about a haul he had just purchased on eBay. The mother of one of his daughter’s soccer teammates saw the post and reached out. “You have to come over and see my dad’s collection. I really want to sell it.”

Banazek agreed to come look at the collection, curious to see what a fellow avid collector had amassed, but with no intention of buying.

“I walked in, and I still remember it to this day, seeing the Ty Cobb cards, the Babe Ruth cards, all these old cards that I dreamed about holding when I was a kid,” Banazek recalled.

Awestruck by the sheer size of the collection, in addition to the presence of rare and valuable cards, Banazek left the visit still without a purchase on his mind. On the way home, he called one of his best friends, who coaches for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“I said, ‘listen, I just saw the coolest thing.’ I told him all about it and he goes, ‘are you nuts? Buy it, man,’” Banazek recounted.

The wheels in Banazek’s head started to turn on the drive, and it hit him once he got home and sat with his existing collection. “I don’t want to sound corny, but I literally put my head in my hands, and I started crying,” Banazek said. “I can’t walk away from this now.”

He got a call the next morning: a buyer was flying in from California to look at the collection. If Banazek wanted to buy it, it would have to be that day. In an hour, he had made his decision and became the owner of something his younger self could only have dreamed of.

Banazek had to rent, then eventually buy, an entire building to house the card collection. Moving everything took several truckloads, and he and a friend had to scramble to acquire enough shelves to get everything even somewhat organized.

Banazek’s business partner Darren Wieder attempted to start cataloging the cards but gave up after barely making a dent at 80,000 cards. Partly because it’s an impossible task, but also because the beauty of this spectacle lies within the unknown. Every day is Christmas morning for Banazek, who constantly gets to dig through untapped treasures.

“It’s me having the ability to experience my childhood again,” he said.

Sharing the Joy

Banazek (understandably) shies away from putting an estimate on the value of the collection, though it’s certainly worth millions of dollars, if not tens of millions. A key difference between him and the previous owner, though, is that he has no intention of letting the collection collect dust in an obscure building. He’s coy about his exact future plans before they’re finalized, but he wants them to be big, and he wants to invite the world to see.

“I do believe that this was meant to be shared,” Banazek said, stressing that he feels this collection is much bigger than himself.

Sitting among the collection, itself a living museum, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the volume and depth of sports history around you. While it would be easy to focus on the big-ticket items, or the completion of every Topps baseball set for over 60 years, that’s not the most important thing Banazek wants people to take away from it.

The goal of this venture, what he’s dubbed the “Big League Find,” is for people to find their own Tim Raines Zellers card. A player with whom they have an emotional connection, something that reminds them why they love the sport, and ultimately, inspires them to start a meaningful collection of their own.