The storage room is 600 square feet and includes 12 racks full of baseball cards. The tour guide describes it as a mess as he walks down one of the aisles, but it’s not that.

A semi-organized spectacle might be a better way to describe it.

The home’s previous owner was a hoarder, and Beau Thompson definitely is not that. There’s a method to this madness even if, yes, Thompson has a lot of work to do once this pursuit of his has reached its finish line.

That will come Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field, where Thompson will be presented with his one millionth Chicago Cubs card during an on-field ceremony. He’s even scheduled to throw out the first pitch before the Cubs host the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Thompson, 41, knows where to be and when to be there. He doesn’t know which card he’ll be receiving from Topps — the trading-card giant caught wind of Thompson’s chase to 1,000,000 and decided it wanted to help him reach the milestone — but the suspense isn’t killing Thompson.

“I like surprises,” he said last week.

This is a mission more than six years in the making, one that began with Thompson owning somewhere south of 100,000 cards featuring players of the team he’s cheered for ever since he was a child growing up in the Quad Cities.

He’d accumulated that collection — massive by most standards and yet quite modest compared to today’s total — by putting aside every Cubs card he’d come across, regardless of value. The thought of multiplying what he’d amassed by 10 to get to reach the million mark was both exhilarating and overwhelming at first, but nothing’s impossible in the internet era.

Thompson started an account on X (formerly Twitter) — @onemillioncubs has more than 15,000 followers — and a blog. Other collectors were intrigued and willing to help.

“It took off right away,” he said.

What Thompson quickly discovered: one collector’s trash was another collector’s treasure. Dealers were willing to part with mass quantities for a penny per card at times. Team trades provided another avenue to add to the total, with Thompson exchanging Cardinals or Dodgers cards he owned with fans of those teams for whatever Cubs they had.

Thompson says there about 225,000 unique cards in his Cubs collection, with duplicates making up the rest. On one of those racks in his storage room is a box filled with 1,200 Rick Reuschel cards — all the same 1978 Topps card — that he bought for $10 after seeing an ad on Facebook Marketplace.

He still wonders: Why would anybody have 1,200 cards that were all the same, and what’s the lineage behind those cards?

Amy Lessing wandered downstairs just as her husband had completed his guided tour of the storage room filled with all those cards. She chuckled at a question she’s no doubt heard previously.

They met about a decade ago, and Lessing’s jaw dropped back then when she learned that Thompson had about 20,000 total cards in his collection.

“I’m not a sports person,” Lessing said. “I’m the opposite.”

To each his own, she thought. Lessing, a Realtor, was supportive a few years ago when Thompson decided to quit his job doing logistics for a transportation company and make collecting and trading a full-time gig.

The sports card industry underwent a surge during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 40-somethings stuck in their homes with their children pulling out their collections from the 1980s heyday of trading cards. Thompson runs a monthly trading show in Madison, Wisconsin, and says card trading has slowed a bit since the pandemic lockdown but is still a healthy business.

“I think it’s cool,” Lessing said. “Think about it: How many people get to live out their dream and have the ability to actually do it?”

Thompson’s Cubs collection includes cards ranging from 1887 to products that just hit the market. An impressive showcase in his office includes some of his favorites, including an Ernie Banks rookie card from 1954, and his memorabilia collection includes bobbleheads and signed balls.

Card No. 1,000,000, whatever it is, will be in Thompson’s hands Friday. There will be no march to 2,000,000, he said, because he’s got something else to keep him busy.

There’s a mess to address.

“I want to get all these sorted and organized,” Thompson said from his storage room.