ROSEMONT, Illinois – One doesn’t start collecting without good reason. Longterm motivations in the hobby can be money via a side hustle or as a full-time job, if we’re lucky. But the early beginnings of collecting harken back to a moment in time when a sport, player, and/or franchise captured our imagination taking us out of the day-to-day transporting the fan into something bigger.
Kismet or luck, a lifelong collector and New York Yankees fan, Andre Chiavelli turned his passion into a store in Yankee Stadium with a 2009 Bronx Bombers World Series ring to show for it.
How the doors on East 161st Street in the Bronx opened for Chiavelli were explained.
“Back in 2009, I walked into Yankee Stadium and saw all the newer products of the current players, Chiavelli said. “Then I was like, wow, they really need to have the history of the game here.
“I was fortunate enough to connect with the Legends Hospitality Group, and I showed them the kind of cards we can bring and all the memorabilia we could bring. They were super impressed about it.”
Chiavelli was able to showcase his vast knowledge of the hobby early on with the Yankees cementing his credibility with the franchise.
Andre Chiavelli with BGS cards
“It’s actually an interesting story,” Chiavelli stated. “A guy gave some box seats to one of his friends, and they gave him a Babe Ruth card. I looked at the card, and I checked it; it was actually fake.
“I said, ‘This card’s fake. When you guys figure it out, call me back.’
“It was two days later, they called me back and said, ‘Yeah, you were right. You’re a real expert on cards. We want to bring you into the stadium. We want you in by Friday’, and it was Tuesday.”
How Chiavelli got a store in Yankee Stadium was further explained.
“We scrambled,” Chiavelli laughed. “We got everything ready. I picked a spot. They built a 40-foot kiosk right next to the Yankee Museum. So I figured you go to the museum, you see all the great stuff, and then you come out and you want to buy it. They built it and I was in by Friday, and we were selling away.
“Yankees’ fans, they have shrines in their homes. They just gravitated to it. We started selling like crazy, which led to so many other things there. It happened fast, but, you know, it was a lot of fun.”
Stocking merchandise on the fly would be an anxiety driven moment for most of us, but Chiavelli took on the challenge with relative ease.
“We covered the gauntlet,” Chiavelli stated. “We had newspapers from Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, we had store model bats from the ‘30s and ‘40s, store model gloves, and, of course, we had Beckett slabbed cards – we had tons. We had 500 to 600 vintage cards there. We had a lot of Beckett graded cards there.
“We did a Beckett-(Derek) Jeter jersey with the first one – we had that for sale. We sold thousands of cards; it was great. Anything Yankees, we had it there. Collectors would come in every week asking what new things we had. We probably had 20 dealers bringing us Yankees stuff at all times. It was a constant flow, but it was great stuff. Mugs, ticket stubs – we had it all.”
Being around the ballpark everyday led to a great friendship with top-of-the-line MLB bloodlines.
“I was behind the stand at one of the games when Brian, who runs the Yankee Museum comes over and said, ‘Hey, somebody wants to meet you.’
“I said, ‘Who is that?’ He said, ‘Babe Ruth’s granddaughter.’
“I said, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to introduce me to Babe Ruth’s granddaughter?’ He said, ‘Yes, you’re going to meet Linda.’
“This is a great story. He brings Linda over to me and we hit it off. I dreamed about Babe Ruth as a kid. I used to have a little book beneath my pillow. I’d pull it out and read about Babe Ruth every night… and then Linda is there.
“I showed Linda newspapers from 1927, the 60th home run by Babe Ruth, and she loved it.”
Chiavelli continued, “There were these two little girls who were 10 to 12 years old. They saw me talking to Babe Ruth’s granddaughter and asked her for an autograph. Linda signs some things for the two girls, then we look up, you would not believe it, but a line formed. People left their seats in the middle of the game, hundreds waiting in line for an autograph from Linda.
“Linda stayed there all the way to the end signing things one by one, and she was telling incredible stories about Babe Ruth, stories that I had never heard before.”
Another magical moment created in Yankee Stadium continued further into the hobby.
“When Linda decided to sell some of her grandfather’s original items, she invited me as her guest. It was a very emotional moment for her. She was, I actually have a tape, I videoed her as she walked around the entire room that was set up with of all these items that she was auctioning. They were one-of-a-kind type one photos of Babe Ruth, and Linda just told story after story about all this stuff that she had.
“She had a trunk, it’s like a big suitcase, that had “Ruth” on one side and “Gehrig” on the other. It was a traveling case they took to Japan (1934). She told me the whole story about that.”
Being a personal guest at the auction before bidding began had other perks for Chiavelli.
“I asked Linda for a favor,” Chiavelli said. “I got to swing Babe Ruth’s bat. I asked, ‘You got to take it out of the showcase for me. I have to swing it one time.’
“So, she called the guys over, and they took it out of the showcase for me to swing.
“The amazing thing was when Babe Ruth was younger, they all talk about this big, big, heavy bat. It actually, it was quite balanced. It was an amazing bat. When he was younger, it was more of a balanced bat. When he was older, it was more of the big barrel in the bat, the 46-ouncer bat.
“But younger, it was more balanced. I actually thought it was corked because it was so balanced. It wasn’t the Babe Ruth bat that I thought it was. And then I swung his older bat, and I saw the big difference. It was amazing to be able to do that.
“Linda kept the best pieces for herself, but it was great to be there. She told so many stories about the Babe; she’s such a historian.”
On Aug. 9, the Yankees had an Old-Timers’ Day. From the National Sports Collector Convention, Chiavelli spoke about the preparations for the big event.
“With my company VintageSportsCardClub.com, we have two showcases that are in the team store,” Chiavelli shared. “We have lots of cards in those cases. They haven’t played in a while; it will be great to see the old timers again.
“We went through all the old timers that will be there and started pulling stuff together. Tino Martinez, Paul O’Neill, Jorge Posada, and Roger Clemens will be back for the first time. We have it all ready to go. We have some Beckett cards in there too.”
Asked about some of the more interesting cards collected for the showcase, just another day at the office for Chiavelli.
“We have some Lou Gehrig in there; ’33 Goudey,” Chiavelli stated. “We have a ’48 Leaf Ruth, some ’64, ’66, and ’67 Mickey Mantles that are all eights. We have everything down to a base Jeter and (Aaron) Judge rookie. We have a few tobacco cards from 1909 and 1910.”
Collectors looking for cards 1985 to vintage can find them with Chiavelli from his website to Whatnot, Facebook, and eBay.
“For our sales on Whatnot, we come on with about $40,000 worth of cards,” Chiavelli said. “We built this beautiful mini–Yankee Stadium replica as the backdrop. We sell graded cards, and we sell cards in all sports. We have boxing, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, and basketball cards. We cover all sports and even some non-sports cards. We have graded cards, raw and rookie cards ranging from tobacco cards to some modern stuff.
“The Whatnot show is vintage – Mickey Mantles, Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, and Sandy Koufax; those are the key guys we sell all the time.”
Yankees Store in Yankee Stadium
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