Baseball card collector with old school values

Bob Singer held a fistful of baseball cards at Pirate City.
Must've been 100 of them.
Only a fraction of his collection.
"It must be in the millions," said the 57-year-old retired teacher, who started collecting them in the 1950s when he was a boy growing up in Ohio.
"I've collected everybody's," Singer said.
Got a lot of them autographed, too.
It's just more difficult to accomplish nowadays.
"Card dealers have hurt us," Singer said as other autograph enthusiasts with albums of cards hovered around the backstops. "Used to be you'd come out here and they'd sign, no problem.
"Now their question is -- are you a dealer? Or a collector? Are you going to take (the autographed baseball card) home and put it directly on eBay?"
Not Singer.
The only place his vast, valued baseball card collection is going is to his nieces and nephews.
He already gives some to them for good report cards.
"Maybe one day they'll be interested in the hobby," said Singer, who has no children of his own.
Whether they'll appreciate the effort he went through to get them autographed is another matter.
"If players want to sign, they'll do it before or after workouts," he said. "Don't bother them when they're going from field to field. Let them get their work done and hope they sign afterwards."
Singer is patient.
It's a beautiful day at Pirate City.
There's no place else he'd rather be.
"It's a relaxed atmosphere," Singer said. "It's fun, keeps you young and takes you back to when you were a kid."