Heaven for a Maple Leaf fan can be found in Mike Wilson’s basement.

Astonished guests come upon 2,000-plus Leafs artifacts, arranged in displays that rival the Hockey Hall Of Fame. But what Wilson values the most in his career collection are the 2,000-plus tales that go with every piece, from the Bob Pulford marble he pulled out of a Post Corn Chex cereal box as a kid, to the door of the old dressing room at Maple Leaf Gardens he bought, re-mounted and covered in autographs.

Without notes to jog his memory, the 59-year-old stockbroker revs into detail about all the sweaters, photos, trophies, plaques, contracts and intimate letters. While touching Gardens gold, such as seats, turnstiles and sticks, game-worn equipment and sweaters, Wilson chatters about how each item came to be in his midtown Toronto home — his own treasures from childhood, those bought at auction, donated or in some cases stolen and surrendered years ago by those with guilty consciences.

“If there’s not a good story attached, I’m not really interested,” said Wilson, whose museum-bar-TV room is what the most ardent Blue and White fans must think awaits them in a Leafs afterlife.

“I’m a Scarborough guy and I originally wanted a simple bar with a bunch of hats nailed to the wall,” Wilson laughed. “A place where I could come down with friends, drink beer and watch sports. Then it exploded into this and there has been no looking back.”

From the top of the basement stairs, where the ‘lyrics’ of the Hockey Night In Canada theme song are framed, visitors descend the 14 steps, a little kismet with No. 14 Dave Keon, Wilson’s favourite player.

There’s hardly room for a TV when you get past a series of glass cases, paintings and framed sets of Leafs hockey cards, beer coasters, coins and the 1960s team photo calendars with a Cup usually in the foreground. There’s also a hockey library and an old reel of film — Bob Baun’s ‘broken leg’ playoff game from 50 years ago that Baun himself sold Wilson. Frank Mahovlich, Darryl Sittler, Red Kelly and Tie Domi have dropped by to validate items, add to the trove or enhance Wilson’s yarns.

A specially lit and ventilated case dominates one wall, with 20 game-worn Leafs sweaters, including visible blood stains on Frank Finnigan’s woollen 1935 model.

“Old Leaf sweaters are the hardest to find,” said Wilson. “They were passed along to new players in those days and when they did come available, they were often stolen.

“A guy had Max Bentley’s sweater and I was negotiating with him (for) about 16 months. He finally met my price, but only because he was buying a lot of Boston Bruins stuff — what a traitor — and needed my cash.

“A sweater from ’51 came from a kid who walked in my office about 17 years ago. His grandfather was a friend of a Leaf trainer and had asked him for a sweater he could pass along to the family. You could tell the kid didn’t like sports and he just handed me the box. There turned out to be a Gordie Howe sweater in there, too, but absolutely moth eaten and destroyed.”

A Paul Henderson stick from the 1972 Summit Series came Wilson’s way, years after a racetrack acquaintance of King Clancy and Harold Ballard received it from the Leaf execs upon the birth of his grandson. The kid grew up, hated hockey and auctioned it. Score another for Wilson.

When Mahovlich and wife Marie visited, Wilson surprised them with a pair of gloves the Big M wore for Team Canada. The couple was in shock all right, because they’d gifted them years earlier to a home renovator, who promptly sold the mitts for huge profit. Wilson, who’d bought them elsewhere and didn’t know the background, offered to return them, but Mahovlich said to keep them on show.

Wilson, who also purchased ex-Leafs captain Jim Thomson’s skates at auction, has found other relics just by poking around flea markets, garage sales and second-hand stores. Pulling off a highway in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., one day after seeing a roadside ad for a hockey show, he happened upon ex-Leaf Chris Kotsopoulos, who was signing items. At the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City on his way in to see Canada play, he spotted an old man selling handmade Leafs figurines in a Russian doll design. He bought it, partner Debra stuffed it in her purse and it turned out to be worth between $500-$1,000.

Before the Internet allowed people to shop from home, Wilson also frequented football and baseball memorabilia shows. He’d feign interest in those sports, then carefully look for hockey items that were often tossed in at low prices. Daughter Andra and son Ryan soon took up his passion.

When he named Andra in the early ‘90s, Wilson wasn’t aware it was the same as Kelly’s wife and Lanny McDonald’s daughter, but he’s proud she could recite the Leafs roster at age 8. Ryan was a goalie for the Markham Waxers, following Mike, who was a minor pro centre in Orillia and Port Alberni in the Pacific Coast League, as well as stints in Italy and Sweden.

Some items came to Wilson en masse, as in the late 1990s when the Gardens was being shuttered. The stacks and stacks of paper files and contracts that Ballard never bothered cataloging were simply designated for trash. Workers or carrion pickers carted many off, but Wilson and others re-claimed some unique documents through various channels — such as a 1968 letter from Tim Horton’s wife blasting GM Punch Imlach for letting Leafs standards slip. Remember, the Leafs’ Cup drought was not even a year old back then.

Another was from Imlach to Terry Sawchuk, that began ‘What the hell are you doing?’ ordering the goalie to return a replica of the Cup he took from a team dinner. One note is from Jacques Plante, asking GM Jim Gregory for a new contract because he was in good enough shape to jog a mile. The widely circulated training camp schedule that Imlach sent to Jim Pappin in 1962, telling players golf would be part of the itinerary, was originally Wilson’s find.

“Someone is out there right now with a whole pile of files trying to sell to me,” Wilson said.

“There is only so much I can display.”

But when Wilson was growing up, it was more fun to live the gilded age of the Leafs than document it.

“For my era, there was just Leafs and Argos,” said Wilson, the eldest of four kids in a hockey-mad family coached by parents Ernie and Kathleen.

“My dad went to St. Mike’s College (home of many Hall of Fame Leafs) and Saturday night in the early ’60s was about going to someone’s house with a TV, mom and dad having drinks and the game on at 9 p.m. I played, too, so the game became everything to me. But you didn’t think of souvenirs.”

That changed the day a friend gave Wilson a Carl Brewer game-used stick.

“I’d take it on to the street and just lay it on the grass for the other kids to see. It was my pride and joy. Eventually, I did use it until it became a twig. But the shaft stayed in my house another 20 years.”

Then came a famous colour Libby’s Beans colour poster of Mahovlich in full flight. Wilson’s father had two properly framed, for Mike and Mahovlich’s dad, who ran the skate sharpening booth at Leaside Arena where Ernie played in the IBM company league.

“That’s where it really started for me,” Wilson said. “From them on, I had stuff in my room. I wanted as many hockey cards as I could get. I’d flip them with my friends. I got the player coins from Salada tea, Shirriff products, the kind you would play finger hockey with at the table or at school and the pictures on the back of Chex cereal.”

Wilson bought an unopened Chex box from the ’60s with Imlach’s hockey tips, now valued between $800 and $1,000.

“I’d go shopping with Mom for Chex, though I didn’t even like them,” he confided. “If you got a Montreal player on the box, you threw it away.”

Wilson’s obsession greatly distracted from his schoolwork.

“I was fanatical. I wrote everything about the Leafs. Career Day was about me joining the Leafs. My teacher sent a note home saying ‘It’s too much, Mike has to talk about something else.’ My parents sat me down for a discussion. So I wrote about Bobby Hull breaking the 50-goal record.”

With no trade shows back then to move or liquidate his growing Leafs assets, Wilson’s room was soon bulging with sticker books, programs, cards and pucks. Storage boxes followed him through high school, university, even his minor pro days.

“When I played in Vancouver, I still had pictures of the Leafs around my bed, such as Borje Salming. My teammates couldn’t understand it.”

He put aside space in a condo, renovated the basement of his first house in Unionville, but both proved inadequate for all his prized possessions, which now included artifacts from Wayne Gretzky, Team Canada, the Blue Jays and Notre Dame football.

“It got to the point where I couldn’t look at boxes anymore, but I wasn’t going to leave them in storage.”

Six years ago, he and Debra decided their next abode would have the collection as its centre-piece, a backdrop for many fund-raising ventures they’re involved in with Canadian amateur athletes and charitable causes, while keeping upper floors for family. They settled on a lot with an 1,000-square foot basement.

Designer Ariel Muller made Wilson think big, an intimate, Leafs-centric version of the Hall of Fame. In the next 18 months, the basement was dug to increase height to nine feet, the foundation re-inforced, flooring and walls completed. Wilson doesn’t want to get into what the collection is worth (he’s never done a full inventory), but in case of uninvited company, there are no windows and four security cameras.

When the first person Wilson hired to lay out the displays told him his ideas were too grandiose to work (“I lost it on the guy that day”), he was put in touch with Scott Veber, who was theme expert at the Hall itself.

“He was this skinny little guy with a knapsack, who I first thought was somebody’s kid,” Wilson recalled. “But he started looking through my boxes and says ‘This is awesome.’ He was here every night for six weeks, downstairs four hours at a time, doing one section then bringing me in to see. I only found later he was a Habs’ fan.”

Wilson’s only request of Veber was that the 20 sweaters get main stage and that the room be bookended by a plaque of the 1954-55 Leaf roster (the season he was born) that once hung in the Gardens and the 1929 Notre Dame title banner. In between, he worked in Gretzky, Team Canada, the bar, a ring of armchairs and two TVs. Even the bathroom is Leafs-inspired with team pictures and a glass shower door with classic logo.

Wilson’s big-game haul was the Gardens auction in November of 2000, hundreds of historical bits and bobs on sale.

“I started buying a few things, but then noticed a lot of people there were paying too much just to be part of it. I bought a 1930s turnstile for less than the most modern ones went for. The 11 Cup banners (replacing the originals Ballard had trashed) only hung there a few years, but guys were paying $5,000 for them and ($60,000) for the ’67 one. A head shot of Keon went for $9,000. Ridiculous. I knew guys were going to buy stuff in the heat of the moment, take them home and not know what to do with them.”

Many items came back in smaller, private auctions, which Wilson and others did get into. Wilson’s largest piece is the dressing room door, actually stolen by a worker then sold to a collector.

“I sat on that 10 years after buying it, but knew I’d make room for it one day. Same with the locker stall (with a Todd Warriner nameplate).

“Sittler once asked me ‘what drives you?’ It’s not the star power, that does nothing for me outside of authenticating each item. But each has to have a story and that’s why I don’t mind showing it. For me it brings back the moment in time.”

For practical reasons, Wilson doesn’t allow public tours, but says any former Leaf need only knock.

“I want every living Leaf to see this,” he said. “If we could have a big Stanley Cup celebration down here, that would be the best.”

lance.hornby@sunmedia.ca