All these years, hardly anyone knew that a two-time All-Star, a lifetime .292 hitter and the 2007 National League Comeback Player of the Year was painstakingly building a card collection that became the envy of the industry. No other assemblage of rookie cards comes close, according to experts.
Young rattles off names. He has one of only two 1954 Hank Aaron cards rated as a Gem Mint 10 by the Professional Sports Authenticators (PSA), an independent third-party memorabilia grading company. Ten is the highest rating, and indicates a lot more than that the card was never slipped into bicycle spokes. The photo has to be perfectly centered, and even a print dot, tiny smudge or rubber-band marking is an automatic disqualifier.
“In the world of collecting, every collector has their own theme,” says Joe Orlando, president of PSA. “If you are talking about baseball rookie cards in the highest quality, no other collection comes close to Dmitri’s. The thing that’s neat about his collection is that he’s assembled not only Hall of Famers, but any noteworthy player in the post-World War II period.”