Beau Thompson threw a ceremonial first pitch before Friday’s Cubs-Dodgers game at Wrigley Field. [Photo courtesy of Justin Landwehr]

Many young people collect trading cards featuring famous athletes. Some stick with the hobby long enough to amass large collections of a thousand or more cards.

Not many make it to the million-card level. But Beau Thompson has.

Thompson, a 2000 Annawan High School graduate who now lives in Madison, Wis., has a collection of about three million baseball cards stored in his 900-square-foot basement. He said a collection that large isn’t all that unusual; he knows of several people who have that many.

But as far as he knows, Thompson is the only collector who has a million cards of players from the same team.

That team is the Chicago Cubs, and at Friday’s Cubs game Thompson received the Cubs card that brought his collection to the million mark.

Thompson said he knows some of the people in the Cubs organization and has done some trades with them.

About a month ago, he said, the Topps trading card company reached out to him about his Cubs collection, and offered to present the millionth card to him.

They did that at Friday’s game between the Cubs and Dodgers.

The Cubs made a big event out of it. They flashed “Congrats on 1 million Cubs, Beau” on the message board on the outside of Wrigley Field.

Inside the stadium, Thompson got throw a ceremonial first pitch. That event was captured on the jumbotron in right field, as was an image of Beau with Clark the Cub, the Cubs’ mascot.

The oldest cards in his collection date back to 1887, when the team that would become the Cubs called itself the White Stockings. At that time, most baseball cards were issued by tobacco companies, Thompson said.

Thompson was shown with Clark the Cub on the Wrigley Field jumbotron. [Photo courtesy of Justin Landwehr]

Thompson said he doesn’t have any individual baseball cards as valuable as the early 1900s Honus Wagner card that recently sold at auction for $6.6 million or the 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle rookie Card that’s valued at over $3 million.

“Once I buy a card, I don’t really watch the value of it,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think any card in his collection is worth more than $1,000.

Thompson quit his “regular” job a few years ago and now spends his time buying and selling baseball cards.

Thompson’s sister Debra (Greg) Rashid lives in Kewanee, and his brother Cory (Julie) Thompson lives in Annawan.

The message board on the outside of Wrigley Field honored Beau Thompson. [Photo courtesy of Justin Landwehr]