For most of his life, Dave Oliver has collected sports memorabilia.
And as the valuables are bringing in cash at auction, he’s using the proceeds to fund scholarships for college-bound youth.
A recent Huggins & Scott auction of 35 lots of Oliver’s big ticket collectibles brought in more than $56,000.
The sale included a 1951 Mickey Mantle rookie card made by Bowman Gum, which generated about half of those proceeds.
A 1951 Bowman Willie Mays Rookie card shown at right sold for $3,600.
There is often a personal connection to what Oliver, 80, of Miami Lakes gathers, and there are close ties, too, to how he shares the money those items generate after he donates or auctions them.
“When I started in the late 1940s it was, ‘Hey, these are really neat, get the football or baseball cards,’” Oliver said on April 26. “No one had any idea they were going to be valuable collectibles.”
Oliver is a retired data services executive with Knight Ridder, then the parent company of The Miami Herald.
He has lived nearly three decades in town and resides in a waterfront home with his wife Joan.
Men have been known to venture back to their childhood bedrooms in futile searches for baseball cards that they are convinced are worth a fortune, only to discover that their parents tossed the treasured keepsakes. That wasn’t the kind of home Oliver and his three brothers were raised in while growing up in Versailles, Ohio. “Fortunately, my mom and dad never threw anything away,” Oliver said. “My dad had a barn full of carriages operated by Grover Cleveland. And when he filled it up, he built a new barn. When he passed away, he was up to five barns.”
Oliver caught the collecting bug as a child.
“I expanded to collecting things that were my personal interests,” Oliver said. “And if they became valuable, that was a plus.”
Unlike kids who put their cards in tossing contests or attached them to spokes in the wheels of their bicycles, “I never did that,” Oliver said. “I kept mine in cigar boxes and they were in fine condition.”
Before he graduated from Versailles High School in 1958, Oliver played football, basketball, baseball and track.
While at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, Oliver played baseball and wrestled “until my shoulder was dislocated, obliterated,” he said. “That was the saddest day of my life. All those muscles were stretched so bad I couldn’t lift my elbow above my shoulder for two years.”
Oliver later also earned a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Miami.
But he never forgot his halcyon days as a young sports star.
In 2020, he set up a $1,500 annual scholarship to a graduate of Versailles High School who follows Oliver’s path and attends Wittenburg University.
“After living away from his hometown for 58 years, Dave has shown tremendous loyalty and generosity to support students at his high school alma mater,” said Christy Prakel, executive director of the Darke County Foundation in Ohio, which manages the scholarship. “The endowment fund Dave established creates a permanent legacy that recognizes his love of athletics, education, and his small-town heritage.” Another of Oliver’s gifts, which shows the range of his interests, stem from a relationship that his maternal great grandparents in Ohio enjoyed.
They were friends with Annie Oakley, the famed sharpshooter of the 1800s who hunted game on their farm when she was young.
Oliver donated 20 items – including Annie Oakley comic books, cards from 1888 of Native American chiefs and a Buffalo Bill tobacco card – all valued at $1,700 to the Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio for a fundraising auction.
The museum is also home of the National Annie Oakley Center and has exhibits for the late journalist Lowell Thomas, too.
After moving to South Florida, Oliver spent many years ushering at the games of the Miami Marlins, Miami Dolphins, Florida Panthers, and at the University of Miami.
The Miami Lakes Sports Hall of Fame inducted Oliver in 2019. The citation mentioned his community activities with the town’s Elderly Affairs Committee and the Loch Isle Homeowners Association; his high school sports career and founding the Miami Lakes Senior soft-
ball program (known as The Geezers).
He has 80 football, baseball and hockey game worn jerseys, and sold 20 others in the Huggins & Scott auction.
He’s holding on tight to running back D. (Darryl) Oliver’s UM jersey from the 1982 National Championship game.
Asked about the difference between a collector and a pack rat, Oliver said the former “is more concerned about value and quality.
“A pack rat may save all football cards of all sets that come out this year,” he said. “I’m more of a collector. I’ve got certain interests.”
He collected non-sports pieces from the 1880s and early 1900s of European royalty and moments in American history simply “because the artwork was so outstanding on tobacco cards or cards from a soap company and candy sponsors.”
A set of nine historic figures shown below sold at auction for $2,800.
A heartbreaker was the 1951 Topps Connie Mack 11 card set that included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, shown at top.
It would have brought in more than $10,000 if Oliver hadn’t punched out the red frames so that he could stand the cards upright.
Instead, it sold for $1,100.
It’s not easy to let go of his relics – “It’s like selling my cardboard kids,” Oliver said.
Lately on special occasions like birthdays, he’s been giving away items to more than 30 descendants.
“Collecting brought tremendous self-gratification,” Oliver said. “I’d be watching TV and go through sets as I watched a baseball or football game. It was a good nostalgia trip. Now with the scholarship program and gifts to the kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, that’s been very gratifying.”
All memorabilia photographs are courtesy of Huggins & Scott Auctions in Silver Spring, Md.