Quick Steps to Sell Sports Collectible Collectibles at Auction

Chris began working at Heritage Auctions in 2000 after serving as a professional grader with Sportscard Guaranty Corporation (SGC) in New Jersey. He was the driving force behind the inception of the Sports auction division in 2003 and under his management Heritage Sports has grown significantly each year to become the largest sports auction house in the world with over $50 million in annual sales.

Chris has orchestrated the auction of some of the most important athlete collections in the industry including The Lou Gehrig Collection, The Walter Johnson Collection, The Jim Thorpe Collection, The James Naismith Collection, The Mike Eruzione Collection, The Sam Snead Collection, The Stan Musial Collection, and The Brooks Robinson Collection.  

In 2012, he supervised the marketing and sale of the most significant baseball card find in the history of sportscard collecting. Known as The Black Swamp Find, it included hundreds of 1910 E98 baseball cards, discovered by a Defiance, Ohio family while cleaning out a relative’s attic. The sale of The Black Swamp Find collection continues today and to date has brought over two and a half million in total sales.

Chris is recognized as a nationally respected expert in the industry with appearances on NBC's Today Show, CNN, ESPN, FOX News, and hundreds of print media outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, and The Associated Press.  

Today Chris continues to serve as the Director of Sports Auctions for Heritage. In his position, he is responsible for the day-to-day operations, combining vision and execution with a balance of business and collecting passion. He counsels advanced collectors to help them build some of the most significant private collections in the hobby and he also works with consignors on a daily basis to recommend the disposition of their collections in order to maximize their financial return.

A recognized expert in the sports collectibles industry, Joe Orlando was an advanced collector of sports cards and memorabilia for over 35 years before joining Heritage as Executive Vice President, Sports. He attended Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, where he studied communications and was the starting catcher for the baseball team before entering a brief stint in the minor leagues. Orlando went on to attain a Juris Doctor from Whittier Law School in Southern California in 1999 before joining Collectors Universe, Inc., the parent company of PSA, recognized as the largest trading card and sports memorabilia authentication and grading service in the hobby.

Over a 22-year period, Orlando helped develop authentication/grading standards for various collectible types and wrote hundreds of articles, including collecting guides, for the company as part of their educational content efforts. He served as the president of PSA from 2002 through 2018 and was later appointed CEO and President of Collectors Universe, Inc., ultimately guiding the company through a successful public-to-private acquisition. 

Additionally, Orlando has helped author numerous collectibles books. He was also editor-in-chief of the nationally-distributed magazine Sports Market Report (SMR), which under Orlando's direction developed into a leading resource in the market. Orlando has appeared on various radio and television programs as a hobby expert, including ESPN's award-winning program “Outside the Lines,” HBO's “Real Sports,” and Fox Business Network as the featured guest. 

A serious collector since the age of 9, Derek turned his passion for sports collectibles into a prominent career. Derek started his trading card profession as an eighteen-year old college freshman with the opening of his first sports card shop in his hometown of Johnstown, PA.  In 1998, he joined Sportscard Guaranty (SGC) as a professional grader, soon becoming their Director of Grading. For over two decades, Derek has been the #1 choice for most of our hobby’s foremost trading card connoisseurs and he continues to advise the nation’s leading buyers.  As Heritage Sport’s Vice-President and our Director of Grading, Derek has been instrumental in bringing numerous important collections to auction - including the Walter Johnson Collection, the Brooks Robinson Collection, the Gary Carter Collection, the Mike Eruzione Collection, the Dave and William Christian Collection, the Herb Brooks Collection and the Sam Snead Collection.

Lee is a twenty year veteran of the sports card and memorabilia industry.  Lee’s trading card expertise was cultivated through a four year tour as an expert for the Sportscard Guaranty Corporation (SGC), where he served as Senior Grader. Lee joined the Heritage team in June 2007 and now uses his specialized knowledge to maximize financial return for consignors of trading cards to Heritage Auctions.

Hailing from a collecting family in New York City, Heritage Consignment Director Jon Fuld was given sports cards and memorabilia at a young age that his father collected from the 1950s and that his grandfather collected from the 1910s. His grandfather, James Fuld, Sr., was a prominent historian and collector of music, including handwritten scores and first editions, and wrote The Book of World-Famous Music. Jon learned early on how to take care of and assess physical objects of value. He routinely attended Gloria Rothstein and The National sports shows and negotiated with veterans in the business from an early age.

Jon turned this collecting legacy into a career, serving as a pre-war and post-war sports memorabilia dealer in New York, as well as a fine art dealer and a pawnbroker, prior to joining Heritage. He attended Johns Hopkins University and Fordham Law School, and earned a Certificate in Old Masters Art from Christie’s. A collector in many fields — sports memorabilia, historical items, Old Masters art and contemporary art — Jon views every physical object as unique, and relishes the opportunity to bring to light the important particulars of each piece. Jon recently handled the estate of Ernie Banks, the estate of Sid Luckman and the collection of Bob Dandridge.

Rob earned a law degree from Brooklyn Law School before he began his professional career as the Regional Director of Promotion and Marketing for Atlantic Records, working with artists like Hootie and the Blowfish, Matchbox Twenty, Phil Collins and Jewel. He quickly realized, that he enjoyed his hobby in sports collectibles far more than his vocation and retired from the music business to dedicate himself full time to the hobby. Since making this switch, Rob has been involved in some of the most significant transactions in sports collectibles history, buying and selling millions of dollars in value of the hobby’s greatest treasures. He uses his vast hobby knowledge and clientele to further enhance Heritage Sports’ standing as the industry leader.

Heritage Auctions Consignment Director Jason Simmons has been immersed in sports for most of his life. Before joining Heritage in 2013, he played baseball at the University of Texas at Dallas and managed youth sports leagues for the YMCA for eight years. He applied for what he considered a longshot dream job with Heritage, was initially hired with Client Services, then moved through other positions in the company before ascending to Sports Operations and eventually his current role as Consignment Director.

His most interesting consignment was obtained from an owner in a small town in Arkansas who had been given an ungraded collection of 1955-59 baseball cards as a gift. Once he landed the consignment, the cards were graded and became some of the nicest examples ever sold at a total value of around $500,000.

Married to his high school sweetheart, Simmons and his wife had a son in 2019. He enjoys snow and water skiing and doing small carpentry work in his spare time. 

A lifelong baseball card collector, Heritage Consignment Director Jason Simonds’ affinity for collecting evolved from family tradition. The New Jersey native’s father was a bottle collector who gifted Simonds a 1975 Topps set for Christmas, which set his reverence for the hobby in motion. Simonds, his father, and brothers would go to flea markets every weekend while they were growing up, and in those settings, he would look for any baseball cards being sold.   

After earning his Accounting degree from Penn State and later a Master’s from Rutgers, Simonds worked in public accounting for a few years. Most recently, he spent five years working in corporate finance for Christie’s, but he also has been a full- or part-time card dealer since his college days. His expertise is in post-WWII baseball cards, and he also enjoys collecting oddball and insert sets from the 1960s.  

Aside from collecting, Simonds’ hobbies include running marathons — most recently the 2019 New York Marathon — and he enjoys traveling and hiking as well with his fiancée.