Brandon's Basketball Collection

    When I was a youngster my friend's father worked at the Boston Garden and used to get us into the Celtics games from time to time. I saved all the programs, schedules, yearbooks, cards, and occasional autographs. Later I played basketball in high school and college. From these experiences grew a rather large collection (and I'm still looking). In 1985-86 some friends and I started a trading collective we called Spanky's (after the nickname friend and collector James Boyd White). By 1989 we were consultants on issues and prices for Beckett, Krause, Tuff Stuff Publications and others. What had been a collection of things no one wanted (especially our girlfriends) had become of national interest. Today, we still trade memorabilia over ebay, while attending to our normal responsibilities in Beautiful Iowa City, where we take interest in music and art, and community, and have a beautiful daughter, now eight, who loves to play violin and piano, ice skate, ride horseback, paint, and ride her bicycle. 

Spanky's Yearbook Archive

Spanky*s High School Yearbook Archive  started in 1988 when I purchased my first high school yearbook, an annual featuring in its senior class the baseball star Nolan Ryan. This became the first issue of a what is now over 1000 annuals that picture the young likes of: John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Curt Cobain, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Katherine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Mark McGwire, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Wayne Gretzky, Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, Muhammad Ali, Oprah Winfrey, David Letterman, Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, J.D. Salinger, Martin Luther King, Toni Morrison, and many others. This collection has become a library from which we make displays and offer information to media and other interested parties. We have been the subject of many print, radio, and television stories, including Beckett, Krause, Antique Road Show, and Iowa Talks.
     Please contact us anytime to talk yearbooks, basketball memorabilia, or music. 
     Email us at: spankysarchive@mchsi.com . Write us at: Spanky's Yearbook Archive, 1822 Rochester Ave, Iowa City, IA 52245. Call us at: (319) 341-9474.

ALL THE BEST!!! -- Brandon & Marit.