'If it existed, my dad had it': Guelph woman inherits historic baseball collection with more than 31,000 cards

April Whitzman and her dad live thousands of kilometers away from each other.

She’s in Guelph and Steven, who has Alzheimer’s Disease, lives in a long-term care home in New Brunswick.

But even though they are in different provinces, there is one thing that keeps them connected.

“The one thing that continues to remain is his love for mom and I, and his love for baseball,” April said.

His love for the game led him to collect Montreal Expos cards.

He started his collection more than 50 years ago when the team was first created.

“[The Montreal Expos] were home to us, it was the only games we could get on TV,” April explained about growing up in the Maritimes.

The Expos were the first Major League Baseball team outside of the United States and played in Montreal from 1969 to 2004.

With his failing health, April inherited her dad’s card collection. She has catalogued and documented all 31,404 different cards, and says  there are no duplicates in the collection.

“Not only did he have it, but he had every variation that there could be. Whether there was a misprint, whether there’s a blank back,” she said. “So if it existed, my dad had it.”

While it was her dad’s collection, she said it was the family’s labour of love that helped bring it together.

April said growing up, her family would travel to different card shops and restaurants looking for Expos card.

“We would buy a hundred packages of Nesquik and 20 loafs of Dempster’s bread and so many different things, with the hope and pray that when we open up the package, we’d get the Expos.”

April said she hasn’t gotten the collection appraised and doesn’t know how much it’s worth, but wants to ensure it ends up in the right hands.

“Collecting it was priceless,” she said. “I know my dad, if he was in full mind today, he would want the collection to go to somebody who would enjoy it as much as our family did.”