For Canadian ex-major leaguers looking for their baseball cards, a Saskatoon man is their go-to source

The Collectors is a series that highlights unique collections and the people behind them. Want to nominate a collector to be featured as part of this series? Email Kelly.Provost@cbc.ca

Retired major league baseball players from Canada know Kelly Sage as "the Canadian card guy."

For many of them, the Saskatoon man has become the best person to get them their own baseball cards.

Of the roughly 50,000 total cards in his collection, Sage estimates he has between 30,000 and 35,000 individually different cards of Canadians.

He said he started collecting baseball cards in the early 1970s in the small village of Cardale, Man., when he was five or six years old.

"The very first card I saw when I opened my first pack was Bob Bailey of the Montreal Expos," he said. "Still have that card."

Sage backed away from collecting for years after it became much easier to acquire complete sets. But one day, Sage bought some baseball card packs at a gas station "for old time's sake." A handful of the cards were of Canadian players.

"And it got me to thinking, 'How many Canadians have played at this level?' And that's where I started collecting Canadian-born players," he said.

"Because that seemed to be a little more interesting to me, because there's far fewer of them, they're far less known. And it was intriguing to see your countrymen playing America's pastime."

Sage said he started sending cards to retired major leaguers for them to sign for him.

Then he learned many of them didn't have their own cards.

One time, he hunted down the autograph of retired major league pitcher and former Toronto Blue Jay and Montreal Expo Denis Boucher, who was staying at a Saskatoon hotel.

Sage brought a binder of Boucher's baseball cards for him to flip through. Boucher also received several of Sage's business cards.

Within weeks, word spread.