Last year I posted the story of my good friend Ben Johnson on the valub blog. Ben was a lifelong collector, avid baseball fan, and for years, bought and sold collectibles on his eBay store the Second Chance Stadium. Unfortunately last year Ben passed away unexpectedly.
I have been helping Ben’s family sell a lot of ben’s extensive collection of sports collectibles over the past year and during a recent collectible sale had the pleasure of meeting Harry Franco and hear about a truly inspirational thing that Harry’s been doing for the past 10 years.
Harry Franco started working as an usher for the San Francisco Giants in 2007. Harry told me about the close group of usher friends that would carpool to the games over the years, about the amazing playoff and world series games he has witnessed in the past decade, and other great stories of his time helping fans in the section behind the Giant’s dugout. Harry asked if I had any baseball cards for sale and explained to me how since 2010 he has bought packs of baseball cards at local card shops and put them together in small packs so he can hand them out to the boys and girls in his section during the game. Harry told me great stories of how excited the kids would get receiving the cards and how their parents would looks through the cards and reminisce about some of the older players they used to watch and be fans of. The conversations between the kids and parents were great, the kids were so excited to get the cards, and Harry hoped that this would help spur the love of baseball for the next generation. I thought to myself what a great story and great things to do and told Harry I would get him some of the cards from Ben’s collection.
Ben’s mother, sister, and daughter heard Harry’s story and were inspired like I was and decided to donate 11,000 cards to Harry to help him continue his amazing tradition and help inspire the next generation of baseball fans and hopefully a passion for collecting as well.
So if you are ever at a SF Giants game stop by and say hello to Harry. We at valubl are so inspired by what Harry is doing we will be looking for ways to follow his example and help get kids interested in collecting… we are thinking of ways we can do the same thing with basketball, hockey, and football cards. Any ideas let us know.
Here are some great pictures of Ben, Harry, and some of tomorrow’s baseball fans and collectors.
