The following is the full text of a Collector’s Dugout profile about Jim that was originally published in Issue #8 (Summer 2006, page 10) of Old Cardboard magazine. It serves as a fitting tribute to Jim’s life in baseball and vintage baseball card collecting.

Jim Beck (1944-2008)

“For Old Cardboard Business Manager Brett Hardeman and myself (Lyman), Jim Beck holds a special status. More than any other collector or dealer, he was our mentor as we first became interested in collecting and is the one most responsible for getting us hooked on the hobby.

That was back in the late 1980s. As owner of AJ’s Sport Stop in Vienna, Virginia, Jim was the source for some of my earliest vintage card acquisitions. Many of those cards are still in my type-card collection, ranging from an N28 card of Joseph Mulvey to a 1950 Bowman example of Warren Spahn.

For several years while Brett was in high school, he worked in Jim’s shop.

It was during that time that a local newspaper ran an article about the shop along with a photo of Brett holding a 1954 Bowman card of Mickey Mantle (newspaper clipping is shown at left).

Jim started collecting baseball cards in 1954 while growing up in Shawmut, Alabama. Although he still remembers his first card purchase–a 1954 Bowman card of Memo Luna–he is still trying to forget the horror of his mom throwing out his boyhood collection while he was away attending college at the University of Tennessee.

After being involved in a number of sports card and comic book ventures, Jim purchased AJ’s Sport Stop from its previous owner in 1986. The shop has been in continuous operation since that time. Now, at a time when eBay auctions have dramatically changed the hobby, AJ’s boasts the longest running baseball card bid-board in the country. But while the weekly auctions are well attended, they no longer end with the madhouse bidding frenzy they once did, according to Jim.

Meanwhile, baseball has been the foundation of Jim’s career. He has been coaching youth baseball since the early 1960s and started a men’s league in 1989, which he still runs and plays in at the age 62. For the past six years, he has served as the Falls Church (VA) High School baseball coach.”

Jim was a true friend to many collectors and will be missed. May he rest in peace.