Baseball Card Shop Is Batting 200,000

Little did Theodore Hermann realize that the baseball cards he started collecting at age 6 would turn into a new career for him at age 62.

After losing his job last year as an operations director for some trade schools that closed, “I sat down with my wife and talked about what I should do,” he recounted.

Hermann said that his wife, Sylvia, asked what made him the happiest. “I told her it was looking at my baseball cards.” All 50,000 of them.

So in December, he opened Ted Hermann’s Baseball Cards in Brea.

“It was kind of scary opening a business at my age,” he said. “You know the family is counting on you. When I had a job, I had a paycheck every week.”

Hermann says his biggest worry is the unknown.

“There is no security blanket,” he said. “You are out in the woods by yourself and only have yourself to blame for any failure. But it’s the greatest thing to have success. You know you’ve done it yourself.”

So far, Hermann said, he’s doing fine “and I have people who have lost their job come in and say I have given them a new outlook and hope in life. They figure if I can make it in business at my age, they can do it, too.”

He added: “It’s a darn good feeling just being helpful to others. It’s the greatest thing there is. I tell them the happiest I’ve ever been is having my own business.”

Hermann has already expanded his business by selling football, hockey and basketball cards, in addition to his present stock of 200,000 baseball cards.

“I’m thinking about boxing cards,” he said. “There seems to be a lot of interest in that, but I’ve never seen any tennis or soccer cards.” But baseball remains his passion.

“Baseball has been with me all my life,” said the Brea resident. “It’s our No. 1 sport.”

Yet any sports event enthralls Hermann, who is a regular at professional hockey, football and basketball games, as well as college and high school games.

“I most admire the baseball guys. They work hard at their profession and deserve all they can get,” he said. “But I go to every kind of a sports event.”

It irks him, he adds, not to be able to get autographs for free from players at the baseball park. He admits, however, that he will stand in line to get a particular autograph and pay for it.

“In my day, baseball players didn’t mind being touched,” he remembers. “Now they have to be on their guard because there are a lot of spooky people out there. That’s a shame.”

Conceding that “there is a lot child in myself,” Hermann is aware he will “never make it rich selling cards to children. The money is with adults who are collectors.”

He added: “I like to meet and talk with young people and get them started in a hobby that was successful for me. When you love something, you want to share it with everyone.”

The bargain box at his store is a big draw with children. “I like to see their eyes light up when they feel they are getting a bargain,” he said. “It reminds me of my own youth.”

When she was young, Frolic Taylor had a tough time with her unusual first name.

“At times, the kids were really cruel,” said the public relations representative for College Hospital Costa Mesa. “But as an adult, I really like it.”

Her mother’s maiden name was Froelick and “when she went to college they nicknamed her Frolic, so when I was born she gave me the name for real.”

Taylor still has some problems. “I have to spell my name for everyone,” she said. “I guess they just don’t believe it.”

(Have an unusual name or know someone with a unique name? Please write to People, The Times, c/o Herbert J. Vida, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa 92626, or call (714)-966-5989.)

Acknowledgments--Legendary drag racer Tom (Mongoose) McEwen, whose 15-year-old son died of leukemia, stopped at UCI Medical Center to visit children with cancer. The “Mongoose” has been helping young cancer patients on behalf of the Leukemia Society of America since his son’s death in 1978.