Todd “Scoop” Hansen of Ludington is quite the sports fan. Throughout his house you can see sports memorabilia from every possible sport. There’s autographed baseballs, old Tigers stadium seats and even signed bowling pins. He’s especially known for his high school football helmet collection.
Over the past 10 years he’s amassed a collection of 328 helmets and counting.
“When I was a youngster I used to collect the little helmets that were in the bubble gum machines. I always liked the colors and the logos. I just thought they were fascinating,” Todd says.
Todd graduated from Ludington High School in 1984. His love and support for the alma mater comes out when announcing games, like Friday’s game at Manistee vs. Ludington. This passion started his hobby, collecting football helmets. He wanted to collect helmets from Ludington’s then conference the West Michigan Conference.
Todd says he initially wrote letters to 20 or 30 schools requesting decals. Then the offers for helmets started coming in.
“And I suddenly started writing to schools and asking for rejected helmets from their recondition process,” he says.
The goal is to have at least one helmet from every high school football team in Michigan. His job has been handy in the search for helmets. In the warmer months, Todd is an entertainment director for the S.S. Badger car ferry in Ludington.
“I meet a lot of passengers from all over the state of Michigan,” he says. “In fact, I meet passengers from all over Minnesota, Wisconsin, all over the United States.”
Todd has been able to get helmets from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana and Texas as passengers of the Badger hear his story.
“All the helmets have a unique story I mean I could sit here for hours on end and tell you different stories on all the different helmets and how I’ve got them.”
But he still maintains a wish list of high school helmets from the following schools:
- Constantine
- Reese
- Elkton-Pigeon-Bay Port Laker Schools
- Gwinn
- New Boston Huron
- Kent City
- Bay City John Glenn
- Lake City
- Grand Rapids Creston
- Lincoln Park
Even though Todd is most known for his helmet collection, his hobby really started with baseball cards.
“My second grade teacher Mrs. Susan Snyder she wrote on the back of my report card, ‘Todd is a very sweet and caring child but lately his main interest seems to be baseball cards,” he says.
Todd says he’s been a sports fan as long as he can remember. His mother helped him start his first collection of baseball cards.
“She used to buy me boxes of cards and I would sit there and I would mess them up and I would put them in order by the teams and organize them and then when I was bored I would do the same thing over and over again,” he says.
If you want to connect with Todd “Scoop” Hansen, email him at scoops1965@hotmail.com or on Facebook.
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