Angelo Savelli who was perhaps Canada's most fabled card collector passed away just over a year ago in March. He'd been suffering from dementia for a few years but it was cancer that eventually brought his days on this earth to an end. This really saddened me because if I had to pick one person who inspired me to restart collecting cards as an adult, it would be Angelo Savelli.
As a kid in London, Ontario I collected all kinds of cards from 1959 to 1965. They all went by the wayside though when I went off to a boarding school run by Lithuanian Franciscan Fathers in Kennebunkport, Maine for grade nine. But the memory of the cards I'd once had never left me. I’d often think back to my collecting days and wish I still had my CFL and other cards even when I was in my late teens but I thought that there was no way I could ever reassemble what I’d had as a kid. I thought they were all lost forever and could only live on in my dreams. Then came an article in the Canadian Magazine supplement to the Saturday London Free Press in 1969 or 1970. It featured Angelo Savelli of Hamilton, who was described as the world’s biggest card collector with every card ever produced. (Much exaggerated of course. He may have told the reporter that he had every Topps sports card ever issued.) Angelo had evidently started buying sports cards in 1948 and never stopped. The article filled me with an incredible longing for the cards I’d once had, cards that I thought were now lost in the mists of time. Nostalgia/curiousity prompted me to buy a few packs of the 1971 CFL, 1971-72 NHL and 1972 CFL cards at the News Depot on Dundas Street in London over the next couple of years or so. (I actually felt a bit sheepish and embarrassed buying little kids’ cards at the time!)
Flash forward a few years to 1979. I had finished university and had been working in Toronto for a couple of years. I'd discovered that the big city had four comic shops, two of which carried old gum cards as well. I was an extremely self-assured young man by then and didn't give a tinker's damn what anybody else thought of me so I set out to reacquire the treasures of my formative years.
Dedicated card shows didn’t make an appearance in Toronto (and perhaps anywhere in Canada) until about 1986 and they were then really low budget affairs held in less than first class halls/meeting rooms. It was at one of these card shows that I then met Angelo Savelli where he had set up to sell cards. Here he is with his son at a Scarborough(eastern Toronto) card show circa 1986:
We quickly became friends and a couple of weeks later I visited him at his home in Hamilton where I bought a set of the first series of the 1969 Topps Football cards from him. (This was back when I thought I could have every card Topps had ever issued!)
Just a few years later in the late 1980's newspapers and other media sources started running stories about the prices fetched by the T206 Honus Wagner and 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards and card collecting absolutely exploded in popularity with the general public. Meanwhile Angie did himself own a T206 Honus Wagner card. He'd bought it in the mid to late 1970's from a Hamilton coin and card dealer on the east side of James Street North near Barton Street East not far from the old CNR train station. He had sold the family car to raise the money for the purchase and his wife almost left him at that point! He also told me that he'd compare his Honus Wagner to the one owned by Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky any time because the latter was trimmed. And it was!
By about 1992 or so Angie himself opened a "King of Cards" store on Barton Street in Hamilton which I'd visit on occasion. His store was actually on the way (maybe a two mile walk) to Ivor Wynn Stadium from the GO train stop in the magnificent old Hamilton Harbour CNR station. After any Hamilton Tiger-Cats game I could then walk briskly to the old Greyhound station on Cannon Street and catch the last Lakeshore GO bus which would let me off after 45 minutes or so right in front of my house in SW Mississauga.
It's funny the things I still remember about visiting Angie's store. I know I visited his store on 19 November 1994. I had passed up attending the Vanier Cup game at Toronto's SkyDome that day even though my beloved University of Western Ontario Mustangs were playing the University of Saskatchewan Huskies for the title. You see Western had beaten Saskatchewan handily every time they'd faced each other previously in the playoffs and I was confident Western would cruise to another victory. Well Western blew a seventeen point lead in the fourth quarter and had to march down the field with less than a minute to play to score a game tying field goal. Final score:
Western 50 Saskatchewan 40 (OT)
So I missed a great game!
I took my card collecting partner from 1963-65, Tony, to visit Angie at his store once or twice. On one of those occasions (perhaps the day before the 1996 Grey Cup game in Hamilton) Angie was dealing with a twelve year old kid who had $10 to spend on either a Pavel Bure or a Sergei Federov card. I clearly remember Angie saying to the kid "I'd go for Sergei Federov. Pavel Bure is up-and-down but you're not going to go wrong with Federov."
Tony and I of course kept straight faces and said nothing at all. When we left the store, Tony turned to me with a grin on his face and said "Yup! Old Ang sure can't go wrong selling the kid a Sergei Federov card for ten bucks!"
Then another time when I dropped in on Angie not long before he closed up shop, he suggested we go to Sam's Hotel & Tavern just a very few steps to the east so we could continue chatting about cards and sports.
Sam's was/is your regular working class bar and though it was rather early in the evening there were already two working girls in the bar one of whom was wearing a bright red dress. They weren't knockouts but they were alright. When it came time to order, Angie said to me "You know what beer I like these days? It rhymes with whores. It's Coors Light!" From his comment I drew two conclusions. Angie didn't like good beer. I mean I would have guessed he'd have ordered Labatt's IPA (my father's choice) or 50 Ale, Molson Export Ale or Carling Red Cap Ale but he opted for an American near beer instead. Secondly he didn't approve of the whores. (Being more liberal minded in such matters myself, their presence bothered me not at all.) So neither booze nor women tempted Ang. All he needed were his cards!
He regularly sneered at the frenzied collecting of the junk wax sets and some of the prices the manufactured "scarcities" fetched. He told me one time in 1996 or so that he did like the Hockey Pogs though! This was probably because Pogs targetted kids and not adult collectors.
A few years later circa 1999-2000 Angie told me about an incident where the cops had phoned him to leave the house because they'd got a tip of a planned home invasion. The cops then apprehended two armed thugs who had pulled into Angie's driveway! This understandably shook Angie up. He said they were planning to kill him for his collection!
It was also about then that I learned that he was keeping his T206 Honus Wagner card in his safety deposit box at the bank. When I asked whether he ever thought of selling it since he couldn't exactly derive any delight from owning it when it was locked away at the bank, he replied "Every day, Vay, every day." Within six months to a year, he had done exactly that with a sale of all his sports cards but Hockey, CFL and wrestling to a big California dealer.
But it was at the big semi-annual Toronto Sport Card and Memorabilia Expo in 2005 or so where I saved one of his binders full of expensive hockey cards from the 1920’s and 1930’s from a thief. I noticed that a tall young fellow at the other end of Angie’s table had scooped up what appeared to be one of Angie’s binders and walked off briskly down the aisle. Angie himself was on the other side of the table and was in no position to give chase so I set off after the fellow myself. I caught him before he got to the door of the hall and said “Excuse me, but is that your binder?” Much to my surprise, the fellow just said no and shoved the binder into my hands. While I stood there gawking for a second or two, he swiftly made his exit through the door. Oh well. I’m not in the business of apprehending thieves anyway, but I’d managed the most important detail which was getting Angie’s binder full of Hockey cards back for him. Angie though thought I should have somehow detained the guy as well!
Here's a picture of Angie in his declining years surrounded by his sports memorabilia:
Angie will be missed by many. May a good friend and great Canadian collector R.I.P.
As a kid in London, Ontario I collected all kinds of cards from 1959 to 1965. They all went by the wayside though when I went off to a boarding school run by Lithuanian Franciscan Fathers in Kennebunkport, Maine for grade nine. But the memory of the cards I'd once had never left me. I’d often think back to my collecting days and wish I still had my CFL and other cards even when I was in my late teens but I thought that there was no way I could ever reassemble what I’d had as a kid. I thought they were all lost forever and could only live on in my dreams. Then came an article in the Canadian Magazine supplement to the Saturday London Free Press in 1969 or 1970. It featured Angelo Savelli of Hamilton, who was described as the world’s biggest card collector with every card ever produced. (Much exaggerated of course. He may have told the reporter that he had every Topps sports card ever issued.) Angelo had evidently started buying sports cards in 1948 and never stopped. The article filled me with an incredible longing for the cards I’d once had, cards that I thought were now lost in the mists of time. Nostalgia/curiousity prompted me to buy a few packs of the 1971 CFL, 1971-72 NHL and 1972 CFL cards at the News Depot on Dundas Street in London over the next couple of years or so. (I actually felt a bit sheepish and embarrassed buying little kids’ cards at the time!)
Flash forward a few years to 1979. I had finished university and had been working in Toronto for a couple of years. I'd discovered that the big city had four comic shops, two of which carried old gum cards as well. I was an extremely self-assured young man by then and didn't give a tinker's damn what anybody else thought of me so I set out to reacquire the treasures of my formative years.
Dedicated card shows didn’t make an appearance in Toronto (and perhaps anywhere in Canada) until about 1986 and they were then really low budget affairs held in less than first class halls/meeting rooms. It was at one of these card shows that I then met Angelo Savelli where he had set up to sell cards. Here he is with his son at a Scarborough(eastern Toronto) card show circa 1986:
We quickly became friends and a couple of weeks later I visited him at his home in Hamilton where I bought a set of the first series of the 1969 Topps Football cards from him. (This was back when I thought I could have every card Topps had ever issued!)
Just a few years later in the late 1980's newspapers and other media sources started running stories about the prices fetched by the T206 Honus Wagner and 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards and card collecting absolutely exploded in popularity with the general public. Meanwhile Angie did himself own a T206 Honus Wagner card. He'd bought it in the mid to late 1970's from a Hamilton coin and card dealer on the east side of James Street North near Barton Street East not far from the old CNR train station. He had sold the family car to raise the money for the purchase and his wife almost left him at that point! He also told me that he'd compare his Honus Wagner to the one owned by Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky any time because the latter was trimmed. And it was!
By about 1992 or so Angie himself opened a "King of Cards" store on Barton Street in Hamilton which I'd visit on occasion. His store was actually on the way (maybe a two mile walk) to Ivor Wynn Stadium from the GO train stop in the magnificent old Hamilton Harbour CNR station. After any Hamilton Tiger-Cats game I could then walk briskly to the old Greyhound station on Cannon Street and catch the last Lakeshore GO bus which would let me off after 45 minutes or so right in front of my house in SW Mississauga.
It's funny the things I still remember about visiting Angie's store. I know I visited his store on 19 November 1994. I had passed up attending the Vanier Cup game at Toronto's SkyDome that day even though my beloved University of Western Ontario Mustangs were playing the University of Saskatchewan Huskies for the title. You see Western had beaten Saskatchewan handily every time they'd faced each other previously in the playoffs and I was confident Western would cruise to another victory. Well Western blew a seventeen point lead in the fourth quarter and had to march down the field with less than a minute to play to score a game tying field goal. Final score:
Western 50 Saskatchewan 40 (OT)
So I missed a great game!
I took my card collecting partner from 1963-65, Tony, to visit Angie at his store once or twice. On one of those occasions (perhaps the day before the 1996 Grey Cup game in Hamilton) Angie was dealing with a twelve year old kid who had $10 to spend on either a Pavel Bure or a Sergei Federov card. I clearly remember Angie saying to the kid "I'd go for Sergei Federov. Pavel Bure is up-and-down but you're not going to go wrong with Federov."
Tony and I of course kept straight faces and said nothing at all. When we left the store, Tony turned to me with a grin on his face and said "Yup! Old Ang sure can't go wrong selling the kid a Sergei Federov card for ten bucks!"
Then another time when I dropped in on Angie not long before he closed up shop, he suggested we go to Sam's Hotel & Tavern just a very few steps to the east so we could continue chatting about cards and sports.
Sam's was/is your regular working class bar and though it was rather early in the evening there were already two working girls in the bar one of whom was wearing a bright red dress. They weren't knockouts but they were alright. When it came time to order, Angie said to me "You know what beer I like these days? It rhymes with whores. It's Coors Light!" From his comment I drew two conclusions. Angie didn't like good beer. I mean I would have guessed he'd have ordered Labatt's IPA (my father's choice) or 50 Ale, Molson Export Ale or Carling Red Cap Ale but he opted for an American near beer instead. Secondly he didn't approve of the whores. (Being more liberal minded in such matters myself, their presence bothered me not at all.) So neither booze nor women tempted Ang. All he needed were his cards!
He regularly sneered at the frenzied collecting of the junk wax sets and some of the prices the manufactured "scarcities" fetched. He told me one time in 1996 or so that he did like the Hockey Pogs though! This was probably because Pogs targetted kids and not adult collectors.
A few years later circa 1999-2000 Angie told me about an incident where the cops had phoned him to leave the house because they'd got a tip of a planned home invasion. The cops then apprehended two armed thugs who had pulled into Angie's driveway! This understandably shook Angie up. He said they were planning to kill him for his collection!
It was also about then that I learned that he was keeping his T206 Honus Wagner card in his safety deposit box at the bank. When I asked whether he ever thought of selling it since he couldn't exactly derive any delight from owning it when it was locked away at the bank, he replied "Every day, Vay, every day." Within six months to a year, he had done exactly that with a sale of all his sports cards but Hockey, CFL and wrestling to a big California dealer.
But it was at the big semi-annual Toronto Sport Card and Memorabilia Expo in 2005 or so where I saved one of his binders full of expensive hockey cards from the 1920’s and 1930’s from a thief. I noticed that a tall young fellow at the other end of Angie’s table had scooped up what appeared to be one of Angie’s binders and walked off briskly down the aisle. Angie himself was on the other side of the table and was in no position to give chase so I set off after the fellow myself. I caught him before he got to the door of the hall and said “Excuse me, but is that your binder?” Much to my surprise, the fellow just said no and shoved the binder into my hands. While I stood there gawking for a second or two, he swiftly made his exit through the door. Oh well. I’m not in the business of apprehending thieves anyway, but I’d managed the most important detail which was getting Angie’s binder full of Hockey cards back for him. Angie though thought I should have somehow detained the guy as well!
Here's a picture of Angie in his declining years surrounded by his sports memorabilia:
Angie will be missed by many. May a good friend and great Canadian collector R.I.P.