Some people collect things. And sometimes those things can be pretty valuable. One good example is baseball cards. Our guest speaker this evening was Mike Frank who is somewhat of an expert in sports card collections. Mike has given over 3,000 speeches over the past 50+ years in 48 states and 16 countries. His professional specialty has been speaking on sales, leadership, customer service, time management, creativity and ethics. In his early career he worked for an international corporation and worked his way up to Vice President of Sales within 4 years by the time he was 26 years old.
He is a founding member and past president of the National Speakers Association and is the speaker Hall of Fame along with the late Art Linkletter, Ronald Reagan, Zig Ziglar, Colin Powell and Dr. Norman Vincent Peele. Mike has also published three books and in the process of writing his fourth.
He has been so Super Bowl 3, a Cotton Bowl, a Sugar Bowl, the Daytona 500, the Masters, Indy 500, NBA All-star game, the first Muhammed Ali vs Joe Frasier fight in Madison Square Garden, and many other sporting events.
Mike grew up in Houston, Texas and his hobby from childhood to 1990 was collecting sports cards and some memorabilia. In fact, at one time he had over 2 Million baseball, football, basketball and boxing cards! This evening he shared some interesting realities about collecting and investing in sports cards and some personal stories along the way.
As a child, he loved baseball and started collecting cards at the age of 10. He sold donuts door to door and used all of the money he got to buy packs of cards. Back then they were sold in Nickel packs of seven cards and Penny packs of three. Each pack had a piece of gum as well. He joked about how much work has been done on his teeth as a result and how much money that cost him! The most valuable card he ever owned was a 1952 Mickey Mantle card. His was not in perfect condition when he sold it but he made out very well. He does have a friend, though, who has that same card in perfect condition who has turned down offers of $70 M! The most valuable cards are typically between 1951 and 1958 and the condition has a huge impact on their worth today.
After sharing some stories he opened the floor up for anyone to ask questions about any athletes. There were many questions and it was quite remarkable how Mike had a story about almost ever one that was mentioned. There were only one or two that he did not know about. He was a very entertaining speaker and the club enjoyed the time we had with him. For many in the audience it was a bit of a walk down memory lane.