AIKEN --- A peek inside Henry Krippner's garage would suggest he is an avid tennis player who has enjoyed the game for most of his life.

But he's not.

Instead, the Woodside Plantation resident is an ardent collector of the weapon of the game, having accumulated nearly 400 antique wooden tennis rackets.

"It's my hobby," he said, surrounded by his collection. Some of the pieces are more than 100 years old. It's not a conventional hobby, but it is one that has gained popularity since the mid-1990s, when two books about collecting tennis memorabilia hit the market.

Mr. Krippner didn't set out to collect rackets. It began about 10 years ago, just before he and his wife moved to Aiken.

"My wife used to play tennis when she was young, and she had three wooden tennis rackets and a Prince metal racket," he said. "She was going to get rid of them and put them in a garage sale."

Mr. Krippner saved the rackets from being sold, which kick-started a collecting passion.

Since then, his collection has expanded considerably. Wooden rackets of various ages hang on the walls, on hooks above the garage floor and across the ceiling. Some are stacked on a workbench waiting for space on a wall.

The wooden rackets are smaller than the metal and fiberglass models used today and resemble those used for badminton.

Some of the rackets are autograph models with the signature and picture of a professional player who would have used that model, such as Billie Jean King, John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors.

Mr. Krippner no longer actively seeks new specimens for his collection, but it still keeps growing.

"Friends of mine bring them to me now and then," he said.

Others are given to him by strangers who learn of his collection and know he will appreciate their small slice of history.

One such person was a woman who came to him about three years ago.

"She said she played with that racket in her college championship series in 1937," he said, holding a Big Bill Tilden Jr. tennis racket. Mr. Tilden was a professional tennis player in the 1920s and '30s.

The oldest tennis racket in Mr. Krippner's collection is an elongated 1890 model that is flat across the top.

Tennis racket manufacturers stopped making wooden rackets more than 30 years ago.