OKC man says prized sports memorabilia collection stolen from storage unit

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A local collector is searching for answers after someone stole what he says is up to $60,000 worth of rare sports memorabilia from his Oklahoma City storage unit.

Nick Weinbrenner said he’s been curating the collection since childhood.

“This is a pretty special collection of a lot of rare sports collectible items, of specific players,” Weinbrenner said.

His collection includes thousands of bobbleheads, trading cards, figurines, and rare player memorabilia.

“There’s a variety of different items, but a lot of Michael Jordan stuff, Kobe Bryant,” he said. “If I had to ballpark, I would probably say in the $50,000 to $60,000 range worth of items.”

Some of the items are especially hard to come by.

“This one [is] a numbered one of 12 made. This one is 18 of 64 made,” Weinbrenner said while showing News 4 two three-foot-tall Chicago Cubs bobbleheads commemorating the team’s 2016 World Series Championship. “So yeah, not very many of these out there.”

But having all those items in a modest home posed a challenge.

“I obviously don’t have a huge house, so a lot of it—or the majority of it—goes into a storage unit,” he said.

On Sept. 9, Weinbrenner said the Oklahoma City storage facility where he’d been storing his collection called him and told him someone may have tampered with his unit.

He rushed over to check on it.

“And got there and opened up the garage door to find it basically empty, with some trash kind of scattered,” he said. “Your stomach just drops.”

He posted about the theft on social media.

Not long after, he heard from the owner of a nearby collectibles store.

“And he is like, ‘Hey, I think I’ve got some stuff here,’” Weinbrenner said.

Weinbrenner said the store’s owner told him someone sold part of Weinbrenner's stolen collection, claiming they had won it during a storage unit auction.  

They told the owner they had even more for sale, which he could pick up from a hotel where they were staying.

That raised red flags for the store owner, who called Oklahoma City police.

Officers went to the hotel and found more of Weinbrenner’s stolen items inside a room and a car in the parking lot.

The next day, Weinbrenner heard from two more stores—both said a man sold them additional pieces from the collection.

“[There] is footage from one of the card shops that provided me the images of the guy that sold them the cards,” he said.

So far, he’s recovered about three-fourths of the collection.

But some of the most valuable and personal items are still missing.

Including some things, which, presumably, the thieves listed for sale on eBay.

“They had listed one of the bigger items, which is a three-foot-tall Kobe bobblehead,” he said. “He's holding the championship trophy. It's probably the rarest and my most prized possession.”

Weinbrenner filed a police report the day of the theft and said officers detained a woman who had been staying in the hotel room with his stolen items.

Surveillance video from the storage facility showed the woman was with at least one other woman when the unit was broken into.

As for the second woman—or the man seen in surveillance footage from the collectibles store—Weinbrenner said police have not given him any updates.

“I just really haven’t heard any information,” he said. “It is frustrating knowing that we have provided a lot of evidence. How hard would it be to go call this cell phone number that we provided you? Or how hard would it be to ask the questions to this lady that you detained or arrested? How hard would it be to, you know, check the eBay listing and find—reach out to eBay?”

He hopes someone will help police connect the missing dots—not because of the monetary value, but because of what the collection means to him.

“It is very personal to me,” Weinbrenner said. “It is a very curated, special collection of unique and rare items.”

If you have any information about the theft, please contact the Oklahoma City Police.