Saying Goodbye To Chet Krause

[Greg Ambrosius]

It's hard to believe that there's another community in the country where one person had more influence than Chet Krause had on Iola, Wisconsin. The man was responsible for hundreds and hundreds of employees moving to this remote town in central Wisconsin and he was responsible for growing the collectibles hobby in so many different fields. He is a legend in this town.

Unfortunately, Chet passed away over the weekend at the age of 92. He will be missed.

Chet was as down to earth as you could find in a man. He was born and raised in Iola and was a carpenter when in 1952 he decided to start Numismatic News as a way for coin collectors to buy and sell coins. He produced this newsletter on his mother's kitchen table while retaining his carpenter's job for a year before deciding to publish the newsletter fulltime.

Chet always was a collector at heart. Numismatic News was his personal way of buying and selling coins, but it became the definitive magazine for coin collectors in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. Chet amassed one of the finest coin collections in the country, but he also was an antique car collector and when the Iola Lions Club needed help to raise money for its Chicken Dinner in the 1970s Chet was there to help. He volunteered to bring his antique car collection to the Chicken Dinner and soon it grew into the Iola Old Car Show, the largest car show in the Midwest. It became a huge event with over 160,000 people ascending here each second weekend of July, which is saying something for a town of 1,301. Chet, never one to worry about his own finances, created a non-profit organization called the Iola Old Car Show and all profits go to those who run the show and to charitable organizations who work at the show. It really is an amazing legacy that Chet created. Oh, and the Iola Lions Club is the richest per member Club in America thanks to all the chicken dinners it sells each year!!

Chet started Old Cars Weekly in the 1970s and he later hired Bob Lemke, who convinced Chet that the next big hobby boom was sports card collecting. Chet jumped right in even though he wasn't a sports fanatic and bought Sports Collector's Digest. It was Bob's idea to start up Baseball Cards Magazine in 1981 and in the 1980s the sports division grew so big it became half of the company, with SCD representing 1/4th of company revenue. Jim Beckett wrote for SCD in 1982 and '83 before launching his Beckett Price Guides. The hobby grew into a behemoth by 1989 when Upper Deck, Score, NBA Hoops and other card companies jumped into the mix and by 1992 it was a $1.6 billion industry. It was crazy.

Lemke convinced Chet in 1989 that the next big hobby boom was going to be fantasy baseball. Chet had no idea what that was, but he wasn't going to doubt Bob. Bob and Steve Ellingboe interviewed me for the job on May 11, 1989 and hired me the same day. I was going to be the editor of a new Rotisserie Baseball magazine and help out with all of the card collecting magazines. It was a risk on my part because I was leaving the newspaper industry after 7 years there, but I just had a gut feeling that these guys were onto something and the facility in this small town was expanding and extremely modern. I had a good feeling about this career change.

Unfortunately, we got off to a rocky start with Fantasy Baseball Magazine. All of our baseball card magazines were selling out so fast from 1988-92 that we couldn't keep up. We couldn't produce enough new titles or enough new books to keep up with demand, and yet at the same time Fantasy Baseball Magazine was struggling to sell at 30% rates. At one stockholder's meeting, Chet said "we have all of these great baseball card titles that are selling out and that division is doing so well, and we have this other title called Fantasy Baseball Magazine, that for the life of me I don't know what the hell it is." I thought that would be the end of us, but Bob kept fighting to keep it alive.

The saving grace took place in our second year when we started using 1 and then 2 issues per year for fantasy football. People don't realize it but fantasy football was barely a blip on the screen in 1990 and 1991. It wasn't until the baseball strike of 1994 that fantasy football surpassed fantasy baseball in popularity. Before that fantasy baseball was always much, much bigger. The best decision I ever made was to do fantasy football issues in Fantasy Baseball Magazine -- and trust me I got nasty letters to the editor for doing that -- and soon we were selling out those football issues like never before. It bought us time and soon we were growing when the baseball card industry was floundering.

In 1988, the year before I came to Krause Publications, Chet planned for his retirement by turning the company into an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Employees would get shares in the company for each year they worked there, an incredibly generous gift from Chet. He never wanted the company to leave his hometown and he felt this was the perfect setup to keep his baby alive and well. It was an incredible gift, one in which Chet did well in the sale and yet the sale was going to the employees. By 1996, Krause Publications was honored as the ESOP company of the year as the nation's top employee owned company. Employees took pride in the monthly sales and revenue reports and everyone felt like owners. It was the most unique setup I've ever seen.

But like everything in America, there's a price for every asset. In 2002, a company out of Cincinnati paid almost 3 times what the stock price was at that time and the fiduciaries felt they had to sell since the price was so good. Within three years that company flipped it to other owners and F&W Publications even stripped the name of the company from Krause Publications to F&W Publications. Chet and his family weren't happy, and trust me, neither were the employees. The company fell on hard times due to the Internet and publishing issues, and a company that once employed 460 people in a town of 1,301 now has less than 100 employees in Iola. The massive building is still there, but with less than 20 percent of it filled, and the sports division is down to 1 fulltime employee after once having 30+.

Tom and I left F&W in 2009 when they sold the fantasy sports division to Fanball.com. They took a growing division and sold it, which was an ominous sign for other employees there. It was probably the best move for everyone because the company just hasn't done enough on the Internet to prosper. We would have languished there.

Chet was a proud man who prided himself on knowing everyone's name. He would always say "Hi Greg" if you saw him in the halls. But we grew so much so quickly that during his final years at the company he no longer could remember everyone's name. For some reason he thought my name was Al and was proud when he saw me and said "Hi Al." I always said "Hello Chet." He was a great, great man who has done more for our family than he can ever imagine and yes, eventually he did remember my name.

Chet never married and in fact lived in his mother's home for much of his life. There's now a monument there. He raised a niece and has family in the area, but no direct descendants. When he started having health issues, he built a living assisted center that is now among the best in the state. He continued to go to his office every day on Main Street and when his wheelchair scooter had troubles going from his new home to his office he rebuilt the entire street leading up to his office with his own money. The Chet Krause Foundation also donates millions to good causes in the area and Chet is known as the "anonymous donor" around here. There's nobody else like him.

Krause Publications was known as the "World's Largest Hobby Publisher" and Chet was one of the world's largest collectors. He sold off his incredible coin collection a decade ago, and he also sold off his car collection and even his military collection, which was the largest in the world. Chet bought every military vehicle he could find from his battalion in World War II during his retirement years and showcased them in every parade around here before finally selling off that collection. Recently he decided to buy every military Jeep used by the U.S. military and once he finished that he sold that collection as well. He was always a collector at heart first and a publisher second.

Again, few communities owe so much to one man as Iola does to Chet. They could rename this Krauseville and nobody would object. There are several millionaires in this community thanks to Chet and a lot of people who worked there have remained here well after retirement. Seeing Chet in town all the time or at the grocery store just reminded everyone that you can be rich and still just blend into the community. You never would recognize Chet as anything more than a happy retired man who seemed to live a good life.

It was a GREAT life. Chet, you'll be missed by all of us here. Your legacy is set forever, despite that F&W sign down the road. It will always be Krause Publications to me and most everyone else in this community. That publishing legacy, that caring legacy, that small town love affair legacy will never die. Thanks for all you did here. You will be missed.

[Coyote Streakers]

did not know the man but sounds like he was a great man. RIP

[hammer]

Thanks for sharing a bit of Chet's life, Greg. Goodbye to an American original.

[Hunter1]

NIce tribute.

[londog7]

Truly a wonderful story and I'm glad you shared it with us Greg. It's too bad that people like Chet don't get more attention in the world today, but of course he wouldn't want it that way, would he?