Long before young Hall of Fame center Shaquille O'Neal saw his own face on a trading card, he looked at two baseball cards and a pair of legends stared back at him.
"I got a Reggie Jackson, I got a Pete Rose," O'Neal told SI of a pack of Bazooka Joe cards he opened as a child. "I kind of got away from it, and then I got back into it when I became a pro."
However, according to O'Neal, looking at Tim Banazek's massive collection "really got (me) back into it."
Banazek is a former sales executive who lives in Virgnia, and has achieved a degree of notoriety in the sports-memorabilia sphere this decade for amassing what is thought to be the largest privately held card collection in the world. He purchased the collection in 2021 from the father of a Facebook friend he knew through his daughter's soccer team, and it is believed to hold about 20 million cards.
Now, the father of three is preparing to take the "Big League Find" to the world—with O'Neal as a partner.
"We want to present this as the most hobby-friendly find ever," Banazek said. "To me, although I own it by name, I really do believe that this is everybody's, because it's got anything that anyone could ever ask for."
The massive collection contains at least 20,000 cards of Hall of Fame guard Michael Jordan, 5,000 of quarterback Tom Brady, 5,000 of forward LeBron James—and those are just the red-letter contemporary names. In the course of a half-hour conversation, Banazek cited at points the presence of cards from the 1890s, cards depicting Hollywood stars, and multiple rookie cards of baseball icons such as pitcher Nolan Ryan, first baseman and right fielder Hank Aaron, and shortstop Ernie Banks.
It's a treasure trove for a man who, like many Americans, found himself falling back in love with sports cards during the pandemic.
"I was battling what I would almost call a midlife crisis, but it wasn't—it was like, what's my next joy?" Banazek said.
He started posting packs he collected on Facebook, which led to the fateful transaction. Eventually, the find caught the ear of Michael Parris—O'Neal's longtime business associate.
"Mike Parris lives nearby and we heard about the story, so we reached out to Tim to see how we could do business together and he kind of had the same vision we did," O'Neal said.
The group is working through a variety of ideas on how to best share the impressive collection with the masses, but intend to keep their options open for the time being. In an era where what once was the collectibles' main purpose—to display past statistics—is readily available on the Internet, they recognize the tangible value of Banazek's cards in an ephemeral world.
"Holding something, something that's yours—that's the value right there," O'Neal said. "Even now, you come across certain cards you've never seen where you're like—'Oh, this is interesting.' I should've had the discipline to keep all the cards I collected over the years."
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Shaquille O'Neal to Help Virginia Man Share Giant Sports-Card Collection With World.
