One of the greatest card collectors ever and a Wisconsin native, Larry Fritsch passed away Saturday. During my first tenure at Sports Collectors Digest, when I was a grader for its card grading division, I had the chance to work at Fritsch’s shop/warehouse, where I graded some of his 65-million-card inventory.

Now, I don’t have too many memories of Larry, mainly because I dealt with his son, Jeff, most of the time. Although one story jumps out:

One day Larry showed up during one of my shifts at their warehouse in Stevens Point and I began asking him stories about his days in the hobby and his collection.
I mentioned to him that some day it would be great to see some of his extremely rare cards. Not ten minutes later Larry came out with a container, no bigger than a shoe box and tossed it on the table in front of me. Larry was quite the showman in his own, little way and really enjoyed showing people his collection, as building the New York card museum would suggest.

With a grin, Larry told me to open it, so I obliged. In it was probably a million dollars worth of cards! There was a T206 Plank, Wagner, two Doyles and two 1932 Fred Lindstrom cards (the only two in existence I might add). That was in 2001. Quite the sight for a kid trying to make it in the card business fresh out of college.

He will be missed.