Greg Tranter

Greg Tranter – Sports Historian, Curator, Author

Greg is a Sports Historian, Author and Museum Curator with a specialized expertise in Buffalo Bills history. He compiled the seminal Buffalo Bills memorabilia collection of over 108,000 artifacts. Greg, a passionate Bills fan, season ticket holder, and avid collector since a youngster amassed his immense collection over a 50-year period. It is among the finest and most comprehensive single team sports memorabilia collections known to exist of any sports team in the world. In 2015 Greg donated the entire collection to the Buffalo History Museum, announcing that the collection belonged to the community of Buffalo.

Greg has authored seven books on professional sports history, six specific to Buffalo professional sports history, including: Makers, Moments & Memorabilia, A Chronicle of Buffalo Professional Sports; RELICS, The History of the Buffalo Bills in Objects and Memorabilia; The Buffalo Sports Curse, 120 years of pain, disappointment, heartbreak and eternal optimism; Buffalo Bills: An Illustrated Timeline of a Storied Team; Buffalo Braves: From A to Z; One Bills Drive, The Buffalo Bills Best Home Games, 1973-2025; and The Providence Steam Roller, New England’s First NFL Team.

He has curated multiple sports exhibits including The Buffalo Bills 50th Anniversary exhibit in 2009, the Buffalo Bills Wall of Stuff exhibits in 2014 and 2016, Icons: The Makers and Moments of Buffalo Sports exhibit in 2017, The Buffalo Braves exhibit in 2019, the Bills Fan Exhibit in 2022 and several Bills-themed pop-up exhibits.

Greg authored and acts as the tour guide for the Buffalo Sports Heritage tour, a collaboration between the Buffalo History Museum and Explore Buffalo. Buffalo News reporter Mike Harrington wrote about the tour with a headline that read, “Fascinating Buffalo bus tour will blow you away with sports facts.”

On the pages of Western New York Heritage magazine Greg has brought to life little known or mostly forgotten stories of important events in Buffalo Sports History. Those stories include, How the Boston Red Sox were born in Buffalo at the dawn of the American League in 1900/01; How the Atlanta Hawks began its franchise journey as the Buffalo Bisons in 1946; How Buffalo was home to the first Women’s Professional tackle football team in New York State History in 1970 and its first game is commemorated by a New York State Historical Marker at Robert Rich Jr. All High Stadium, thanks to Greg’s pursuit of the Marker; How Trench Manufacturing, a Buffalo company on Main Street, was the leading manufacturer of sports pennants from the 1940’s to the 1990’s as well as a major manufacturer of other sports novelties before its demise in 1995; the Indianapolis Clowns: The Buffalo Years chronicling the early professional career of Henry Aaron and the first three women to play high level professional baseball against men in the Negro National League; and a story about the first professional football game played under the lights at night, and it was played in his hometown, Elmira, New York, along with the dedication of a New York State Historical Marker on the site of that first game.

In addition, he writes for two other magazines – NY-PA Collector and Gridiron Greats featuring Buffalo memorabilia and Queen City historical sports stories in much of his writing. He also formerly wrote for the Bills Shout! magazine. Greg has been sought out by major networks and publications for his views on Bills history, including the New York Times, ESPN, the A&E network, the Athletic, Buffalo Sports Page, Sports Illustrated, Spectrum News, WETM-TV, WIVB-TV, WKBW-TV, WBBZ-TV, and WNED-TV among others. He was the expert historian utilized by WNED-TV when they produced their Ralph C. Wilson Jr. documentary in 2017 and he was featured in it.

Greg is the Assistant Executive Director of the Pro Football Researchers Association and the Editor-in-Chief of The Coffin Corner, both roles as a volunteer. He brought the PFRA National Convention to Buffalo in 2018. Greg received the PFRA’s Bob Carroll Memorial Writing Award in 2018 and its Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography” in 2022.

Greg is also a lifelong Bills fan and 40-year season ticket holder.