HOBBY PIONEERS
In Part 1 of this article (Jan. 1, 2022 issue), I started to organize the pioneer sports card collectors I have written about in SCD. I started with brief bios for collectors born before 1920. Part 2 covers collectors born between 1920 and 1939. Since I have only listed collectors I have written about previously, readers are encouraged to report other candidates (born before 1940) who contributed significantly to the hobby for an “update set.”
1920-1982 BOB JASPERSEN
Jaspersen was a four-sport high school athlete in Wisconsin who became a sportswriter in St. Paul, Minn. and Philadelphia. Jaspersen contracted tuberculosis in 1939 and spent the next two years in hospitals or sanitariums. While in isolation, he wrote about sports cards and guides and tried to find other collectors with a one-page newsletter called “Bill and Bob’s.”
In 1951, he started Sport Fan, one of the first publications directed toward the sports card collector, and published Sport Fan Who’s Who directories in the 1950s. He wrote with enthusiasm and humor. He attended and reported on the first gatherings of collectors in the late 1960s and early 1970s and kept Sport Fan going, with some interruptions, until 1977. His son Mike Jaspersen and grandson Nick have continued in the business of sports cards.
1920-2013 RAY HESS
Hess attended Babe Ruth’s last game as a Boston Brave against the Philadelphia Phillies in 1935, a year in which the Phillies drew all of 205,470 fans to the Baker Bowl. Hess and his buddies could find plenty of good open seats and watched Ruth hit three long ones over the 60-foot-high right field wall — in batting practice.
Hess moved to California in 1941. In 1958, he was presented with a big box of Bell
