HISTORIC COLLECTION
He called them his “paper babies,” and when a new one arrived, it was a joyous occasion for Dr. Thomas Newman.
A lifelong baseball fan, Newman stored his massive collection of sports cards all over the place. His most valuable treasures were stored in a huge safe at his home in Tampa, Fla. Others were heavily secured in cabinets and closets. Even more were stored in a locked room on the top floor of his nearby medical practice.
Newman owned millions of trading cards he had collected since the 1980s, many of them replacing cards he adored as a kid. And though some were more valuable than others, they were all precious to him.
He loved nothing more than taking them out and examining them like pieces of fine art and showing them to family and friends. Sometimes he would slip away from work for a while, telling his staff he was going to “play with his paper babies.”
“It was just part of him. It was something that he did every day and got so much joy out of,” said his wife, Nancy. “His staff would always laugh about his paper babies because he was always ordering from eBay and stuff
