It’s in the Cards

When standout UNH athlete Billy Pappas ’55 passed away in March 2023, friends, family and former UNH teammates remembered him for his quick wit, his energetic personality, his humility and his athletic talents.

Toni Pappas’ friend and contractor Scott Landry found the cards as he was beginning renovation work on her Manchester barn. The collection spans the late 1930s to early 1940s, and includes a rookie card of famed Boston Red Sox player Ted Williams.

The cards were discovered during a barn renovation at the Manchester home Billy grew up in, and where he and his wife, Toni, lived for many years.

“Right away I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, those were Billy’s cards,’” his wife told WMUR-TV soon after the discovery in the barn walls by one of her contractors.

The cards — some 52 in total — were likely squirreled away in the barn by a young Billy, says Toni. “I can imagine my husband at 10 or 12 years old. He was looking at all these cards, playing with them, trading them off with other kids, and probably dreaming that he’d be a great athlete someday,” she told the news station.

At UNH, Pappas held many records in the basketball program, including fourth-best scoring average in program history, scoring 1,228 points in his four years here. In football, he was an All-American quarterback for the 1954 Yankee Conference. He was inducted into the UNH Athletics Hall of Fame in 1982.

Toni is currently having the cards appraised, and mentioned that if they were found to be valuable, she would sell them and donate the money to the student-athlete scholarship that she and Billy created at UNH in 2017.