The salient focus of today's discussion lies in the exploration of the intricate world of trading cards, specifically those associated with the Pittsburgh Steelers, as we engage with Ryan Minnigh, the curator of 304 Collector's Corner. Ryan's passion for football history and card collecting emerged during the pandemic, transforming what began as a pastime into a formidable project dedicated to cataloging the rookie cards of Steelers players. He endeavors to honor the legacies of both celebrated and overlooked players from the franchise's storied past, striving to build a comprehensive collection that currently features 1,118 individuals, with only a fraction lacking representation in card form. Throughout our dialogue, we delve into the significance of preserving these narratives and the broader context of football history that extends beyond the iconic 1970s era. Join us as we traverse the rich tapestry of Steelers lore through the lens of trading cards and the stories they encapsulate.

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Great episode in store today as we've got a collector of some trading cards in a very unique situation from my favorite team.

What's coming up in just a Moment is the 304 collector's corner, and he's got some great football cards to share with you and I in just a moment.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes, is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And we have a really interesting episode for you tonight.

We're going to go into our.

Our Collector's Corner here and literally and figuratively, because we have a gentleman that I became aware of recently on social media that that has a spot called 304 Collector's Corner.

And he had some interesting things on the Pittsburgh Steelers, which, you know, piques my interest, and we're going to let him tell his story a little bit.

His name is Ryan Minick and he joins us tonight.

Ryan, welcome to the Pig Pen.

Thank you, Darren.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me on and let me tell this story.

I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, Ryan, so why don't you first tell us a little bit about how you're decked in Steelers gear.

You're.

You're putting things on social media about Steelers history.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in that?

Yeah, so I, I grew up in West Virginia, so we, in my area, we kind of had a choice of who we were going to be.

Fans of my family, my dad was a Steelers fan, so that was kind of where I ended up being a fan of.

Now, when it comes to cards, that was just something that always made sense to me.

That was something that I enjoyed.

It kind of made the game real, something that you could have.

But this project, specifically 304 collector corner was built out of pandemic boredom.

So that was kind of me saying, I'm going to put it all out on social media.

But now the, the focus of this collection has been the Steelers rookie cards, and a lot of that came into focus in the last five years or so, since COVID as well.

Now, like we were talking about, I, I actually started this when I was much younger in high school.

I made a list of the top 100 Steelers.

I said, I can't do that.

There's not, it's going to be changing.

It changes every single year.

So then I found a list of 500 Steelers that changes.

And then I said, I'm just going to do everybody.

We're going to tell every single Steeler story and franchise history.

We're going to collect everybody that we can.

So I went on a journey to not only make an all time roster, but kind of back into that and go on trading card database and beckett.com and make a full list of everybody with cards.

Yeah, so some of them might be back when they were the Pittsburgh Pirates and maybe they didn't have cards like we know today.

So.

So.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Interesting.

That is quite a colossal project you have going here.

What is the meaning of 304?

Is that something special?

So 304 is West Virginia's area code.

It's actually the area code of the entire state.

So West Virginians are very proud to be West Virginians.

So I'm happy to be a West Virginian, but I, I like telling the story of the four 1, 2 a little bit better.

That's, that's where my passion is.

Okay.

Yeah, that's.

But for folks that are out of the area, I'm in Pennsylvania, western Pennsylvania, so I understand the relationship.

But Morgantown is, you know, of course, where the, the Mountaineers play, the West Virginia Mountaineers play.

And they are very well covered in the Pittsburgh area, just like Pitt is in Penn State.

And it's a local team because it's not that far.

Even though it's in a different, over a state border, it's still very close.

And actually I think Morgantown is closer than where I live in Erie to Pittsburgh, downtown Pittsburgh.

So it's a very familiar place.

And there's, it's very common to have Steeler fans down in West Virginia, especially that area in Morgantown.

So, so why don't you tell us a little bit about, you know, some of these players that you put.

Maybe you can pick a few of them and, and tell us a little bit about these, these players and preserve their history.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I'll, I'll kind of say this project even starts before the Steelers a little bit.

So when I originally started it, like I mentioned, I Said, I want to do every Steeler.

But then I realized that professional football itself was very much rooted in Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh specifically.

So I started my project with guys like Pudge, Heffelfinger, Dave Barry, who was involved with the Latrobe teams and the Stars.

I even picked up a Christie Matheson because he played for the Pittsburgh Stars as well.

But I really wanted to focus on the Steelers.

Just because those are the years that a lot of these guys, I don't want to say are forgotten, but are routinely kind of glossed over in team history.

A lot of times I say team history starts in the 70s for a lot of folks.

I actually have a couple cards sitting here with me.

I'll grab this and see if I can get it on camera.

This is one of my favorites.

I'll get it up there as close as I can.

So that is Armand, Nick, Nikolai.

So this is a guy who very much made a legacy in Pittsburgh and was a very early star of the team, but we just don't talk about that era that much.

Right.

So it's unfortunate that we kind of miss some of these guys like Nick Nicolai.

And part of my mission is to help tell guys like this story so we can bring a little bit more awareness to them and hopefully one day put them in the Steelers hall of Honor.

Yeah, definitely a great project.

That's great that you're representing him.

Now, I have to ask you a question, because, you know, I have a book that is.

You're talking about Matthewson and the Pittsburgh Stars, and I wrote a book about the team that sort of dismantled the original National Football League that the Pittsburgh Stars in, the Philadelphia Athletics and Phillies played in.

And so many.

Then what they did is they robbed the original National Football League to put together the Franklin, Pennsylvania, team that I wrote about.

So you said you'd have cards from that era besides Matheson.

And so some.

There's.

There's not a lot that exists from that era, as you can imagine.

So a lot of times these guys are honored in cardboard form much later than when they played.

Now, I'll never claim that my research is perfect and that some of these guys have cards and I just haven't found them.

But that's kind of part of the mission, too.

We're just going to keep going and seeing what we can find and what connections we can make, and we'll find as many guys as we can tied to Pittsburgh sports history.

Yeah.

So, yeah, if you happen to see any of those, I'd be definitely interested in.

So, yeah, definitely.

Okay, I'm sorry, let's go back into the studios.

No, we could go.

I get that.

So I'll pull up another one here.

So another part of this, which I'm sure a lot of fans of your show that are, you know, football history folks know about teams like the Steagalls and Card Pit whenever the Steelers had to combine teams during wartime.

So this is one of the harder cards to find.

Now, I have it in a sleeve here.

I'll try to get it up there.

Close again.

And I was like, how come no one ever told me that Bill Hewlett was a member of the Steagalls?

That just is a.

As like a missed part of his story, in my opinion.

So it's fun to kind of make those early connections of these guys and see where.

Where everybody lines up in team history, whether it be a guy like Hewitt who played one season or guys who played one game in those early eras, too.

Yeah, most definitely.

Yeah.

Very, very cool.

Yeah, the whole Steagalls and the card pits or the carpets, as many people call them, because they got walked on so much.

That's a.

That's an interesting era itself, too, but it's great.

You can bring in some of these Eagles and Cardinals players, too, that, you know, they're.

Technically.

They were on the team, you know, that.

Was they representing Pittsburgh?

Absolutely.

Well, and.

And that kind of Even goes into the point of guys like Al Worstert and Bucko Kilroy, guys who are on the Senior hall of Fame ballots.

And I'm like, let's get these guys in, because we can kind of claim.

We can claim them as Steelers.

And in a way, I know that Eagles fans might not feel the same way, but we can be happy for him as a member of the Steagalls, right?

Most definitely.

Even though they were very poor teams, both of those combined teams during the war.

But it happens.

Yeah, it does.

It does.

So what else you got?

So, one story I'll tell you here, which I think is kind of funny, which is one of the.

Kind of the starting points of this entire collection.

Two guys that I think everybody's going to know very well here.

I got to organize them here.

A little bit of a glare on it.

So I actually got these together, and I want to.

I want to give credit to my mom for this because she actually knows how to.

She knows how to motivate me to get things.

So when I was in high school, actually, I was putting together that.

That early kind of top 100 Steelers rookie car, and those were the two biggest needs high school kids may not be able to afford something like a Terry Bradshaw rookie.

So she said, I'll tell you what, I'll make you a deal.

If you get a certain score on your act, you got a card waiting for you.

I got that certain score, and, you know, 15, almost 20 years later, now I have that card still.

And she always said she's like, the best investment I made was $100 card because it got you more in scholarship money.

And I'm like, ah, you definitely.

You definitely beat the system on that one.

But I.

I always like those because I got them together with that same story.

So it just a fun little way to pick up cards, and you never know how you're gonna find and kind of stumble across people with these cards.

Yeah, it makes me sick because I was buying those packs of cards brand new, and probably, you know, friends and my brothers and stuff were sticking them in the spokes of their bike and make the clickety clacks, you know, I.

I know it.

I've heard so many stories, and I'm sure you have, too, where it's like, I.

My mom threw all my cards away because she thought they were worthless, or I left him at the House and she just tossed them.

I'm like, man, those are the people that I want to go back and look through their collections because they might have had stuff they don't even know about.

Well, my collection, my grandsons have them, took them because I didn't, you know, they were having such a great time, like, hey, just go ahead and play with them.

I probably crazy doing that too, but.

But you know, I sat there and I say that about Bradshaw because maybe you're not aware of this, but Bradshaw really wasn't that popular even, Even after the first super bowl.

There was many times he was booed.

I mean, people were asking, wanting Mike Krujek to come in.

And I happened to be at the game where Terry Bradshaw got dumped by Turkey Jones in Cleveland Stadium and was out for.

And Kruzak came in and took him, you know, took him into the playoffs.

They still, because they still had so much talent, but it wasn't the same without Bradshaw.

And then by the time, you know, he's later in his career.

But there was a time when it was Terry hanratty, who's a 69 draftee or 68, he was a year before Bradshaw, I believe.

Second round pick.

And Bradshaw's in there, Joe Gilliam's in there, and they're each starting like three or four games that season.

Chuck Noel wouldn't settle on a starter.

So Steelers fans don't fret the last few years, you know, we don't have a, you know, we have multiple starters during the year worry.

It happened back in the early 70s too, and they won a Super bowl shortly after.

Yeah, well, and I remember that story coming into this year, of course, the Justin Fields and Russell Wilson debate.

And people were like, this is unprecedented.

It's never happened.

And people are like, Joe Gilliam and Terry Bradshaw are literally the example of this from the same team's history.

And Handrat, he started a few games that year too.

So here's no slouch.

It all works out.

But I have a couple more cards I'll.

I'll kind of pull over here for you and a couple other stories to go with them.

So another one that's.

That's very historical, very well known in the collecting community, I'm sure you know of.

So Warren Heller is another one of those names that of course, we may not know as well, but Warren Heller played for the Steelers for three years.

He was a pit grad.

And whenever he played he led the team in rushing all three years and actually led the team in rushing historically all time until Bill Dudley broke his record in 46 coming back from the war.

So again, stories like Warren Heller and Nick Nikolai.

Unfortunately, guys like Bill Sort it don't have cards, but just those early names that I think deserve more credit, a little bit more notoriety.

Those are the guys that I'm kind of after and I want to tell their stories.

The Val Jen Sante is the Jerry shipkee of the 50s and 40s.

Those guys just deserve a little bit more recognition than they.

Than they get historically.

Absolutely.

When you can sport the Bumblebee uniform like he is in that image, that's a great image.

So.

So are you pro Bumblebee uniform or.

Or against it?

Okay.

So I would say when I was younger, I was.

I was more against it because I was like, I don't know, I just don't like the aesthetic.

And then as I started to learn more about team history and I see these cards and I see these guys wearing them, I'm like, okay, I think I can, I can deal with this because it's honoring the past and that matters.

Right?

I mean, I think the original one that we just saw in that image is much better than the throwback that the Steelers were what, 10 years ago or whenever they did it.

But you know that, that was great.

Especially if they would have only done a little bit more when the Killer Bees were or they're in really maybe made more famous and sold more jerseys.

But that's what it's all about.

They want to sell jerseys.

Well, and that's, that's why I keep seeing these people that say, I'll do the all white uniforms or, or go back.

I.

I'm personally a fan of the 19, I believe it was.

What we would call the original Steelers logo.

It was part of their historic collection this year that they put out with jersey or shirts and hats and stuff.

I love that logo and I only hope that we can see more of that in time with kind of the like the steel mills in the background and the guys up against it.

That is the historic logo, in my opinion.

Yeah.

Well, I've got a friend of mine, we co wrote a book.

We got a book on Pottsville Maroons coming out later this month.

And we have an image because there's a letter where Art Rooney was voting to get possible their championship back for 25, and he has it on the Steeler letterhead and it's Got that logo in her.

Plus it's got Steely McBeam over on the side.

It's got both of them on the Steelers on Art Rooney's letterhead.

So it's.

It's tremendous.

I love the logo.

It's busy, but it's.

It's a great logo.

Yeah.

I mean, anything to honor.

I, I feel like Pittsburgh is very apt in their history in a lot of ways, so they're very ingrained in that steel town.

They're very ingrained in that, you know, kind of tough mentality.

And like we've talked about, that dates back to the original football, the original professional football.

So I think that's why that logo resonates with me more.

Even not being a Pittsburgh guy, I think that's just very much the city and represents it the best.

Yeah, most definitely.

But, you know, I love the.

I love the tradition of the new logo, too, and it only being on one side of the helmet, I just think it's.

It's different, it's unique, and it may.

It's got a great story, too, why it's only on one side, so.

But it's.

It's a Pittsburgh thing and.

Yeah, we'll.

We'll own it.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you what, I'll pull another.

I have another card here.

I'll pull.

This is one for the more modern fans, one that I don't think we probably see that much.

And I genuinely.

I have only seen one time.

So when I saw it, I bought it because I knew I had to have it.

And in the 20 odd years I've been collecting, I've seen this card one time and I bought it and I said, I.

I have to have it because I've never seen it.

But I, I still claim this one is kind of one of my favorites, just because of the scarcity of it.

I'm sure there's other ones floating out there, but I've.

I've seen it one time.

Yeah, well, hey, that's what they say.

When you.

You see it, you may never, ever see it again.

That's when you get it, you know, because you might not find it again.

I'm glad I did.

Yeah.

Definitely glad I did.

And Aaron was.

I mean, he was tremendous.

You know, I mean, the linebackers get all the glory, but it's those guys, you know, and Casey Hampton gets a lot of credit, rightfully he should.

But, you know, guys like, you know, Kiesel coming in and Aaron Smith, those guys were doing the work and eating up blockers, too, so those backers could be free in Roman, get the.

The sacks and be the Blitzberg that they were.

Well, and.

And.

And I will say, when it comes to.

To cards in that way, I'm.

I'm glad that these guys are on cards.

I'm glad that there was the wherewithal to.

To put these guys on cards, because, like I said, my.

It makes sense to me.

Cards are a way to kind of own the game without spending a ton of money to do it.

These are the guys.

I'm so happy that.

That all of these guys are represented on cards.

And even still today with the new Steelers, it's a.

It's an ongoing thing, but it's.

It's fun to see all these guys represented in that little slab of.

Slab of cardboard.

Yeah.

You know, I had the opportunity a couple of years ago.

I met John Kolb a couple of times, and the first time I met him down in Pittsburgh, we had a Pfra convention down there, and I took my dad.

My dad got me into being a Steelers fan.

So I went and I took a couple cards.

I took Kolb's rookie card down, and I took his second year card.

So 72, 73, I think they were.

And I took him down there and Colb, Signing his own cards, just sat there and told stories like, oh, boy, I haven't seen this in years.

And these guys love it.

I go up to a PFRA mini convention up in Buffalo every year.

The Buffalo guys, they get a lot of former Bills and they come in with their cards.

You know, Jeff Nixon comes in, and guys like that, Lupicone, the guys that you never really heard about or because they didn't play a lot, they were like special teams or at the bench.

But they.

You bring their card in there, their eyes light up, and, oh, God, I can remember that.

You know, it's been 50 years ago, 60 years ago, and some of these Guys, but they love it too.

They love it and it just connects them with the fans and with the game and it's there forever.

Well, and one of the guys, it's funny you mentioned that with, with those guys and making that connection.

One of the guys that I've had the opportunity to connect with over the last few months is Doug Davis.

And just listening to him kind of tell his dad's stories and you know, my father played with him, my dad played here, did this.

And just kind of listening to those stories is fascinating because, and I'm sure you know this too, once, once these stories are done being told, they're, they're gone forever.

So it's, it's kind of our job through the PRFA and Cards and everything to continue to tell these stories, put pen to paper so people will remember them forever.

Yeah.

God, I just, when I had my, my Franklin book, we just celebrated down in Franklin, they had a big shindig and John Colb was at that, that too.

But they ended up having a gentleman who played on the 57 Steelers and he had his playbook that Buddy Parker.

Coach.

Buddy Parker gave him.

He brought the playbook in there.

I was stupid, I should have took some pictures of it.

I got some pictures with him, but I didn't take pictures of the inside of the book.

And they were, back then, they had to, they just got a blank like notebook, a little black book with notebook paper in it and they had to draw out the plays as the coach was writing them up on the chalkboard.

So it's in his own handwriting, which made it sort of personal.

And he's telling, he's 90 some years old, he's telling the stories of, you know, some of these things.

It was, it was just a great moment.

But yeah, these guys, even, he only played for a couple years, you know, they love to tell their stories and it's great thing.

Now, have you been to the Steelers hall of Honor too?

In, in down in Heinz or Aker?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

Because I was going to say when I, when I first walked through there, that was kind of my first introductory, not my first introduction, but like to actually see the physical history of this.

So when you mentioned the bumblebees earlier, my mind immediately goes to what I believe is Norm Greenies bumblebee jersey.

And then when you ask if I like them, I'm like, well, I like them a lot more now that I got to see an actual one.

And you're like, oh, that's amazing that these guys wore these uniforms and they had Jack Butler's playbook in there.

And just seeing that memorabilia, I spent a lot of time in that room just because, like, I'm.

Like I said, a lot of guys want to run to the 70s, and I get it because that's the.

That's the known era.

But there's so much history in that first 40 years, too, that.

That deserves to be told.

And seeing those playbooks like you said, seeing those jerseys and hearing those stories, it's.

It's fascinating.

And that's precisely why I want to do this project with Cards, because it's a way to tell those stories, and people can pick up these things for relatively affordable prices.

Yeah, most definitely.

But why don't you share with the listeners where they can find your social media?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I'm under 304 collector corner.

The username on some of them is the Steelers Rookie collection or the Pittsburgh Steelers Rookie Collection.

I'm on Facebook X Blue Sky.

I do a lot of stuff on Instagram and TikTok too.

So any of those social platforms, pretty much anywhere that you all are.

I am.

So you can follow me on any of those places, Send me a message if you have stories or cards.

I.

I just love talking about cards and Steelers.

So if you.

If you're a Cards and Steelers person, I'll.

I'll definitely cut it up with you.

All right, folks.

And if you're driving, you can't write that information down.

We'll have it in the show links both on the YouTube channel and on the podcast notes so you can get the links to Hooked up with ryan in his 304 collector's corner.

Ryan, we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing the history and sharing your collection with us today and every day on your social media.

Yeah, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

We're gonna.

We're gonna keep pushing through, so thank you for having me.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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