Card Organization & Storage

[robalfano]

Hello All...

I just got back into collecting after 20 years. Now that I am an adult and can afford to buy boxes, I did, as it was the coolest part of collecting back in the day (breaking open packs) and trading of course!

So the issue I have now is that I have thousands of cards and no idea how to organize and store them...I have some in toploaders, some in books, but it just seems so disorganized.

I figured that although everyone probably has a different method, I could get some good tips and tricks on controlling the chaos.

Thank you in advance for your responses!

-Rob

[DaClyde]

Before you start, you really need to decide what your ultimate goal is for all those cards you are hoping to sort. Figure out which ones you plan on keeping for your personal collection, and which ones you would just use for trading/selling. Then I'd recommend sorting all those in the latter category by year/set, and maybe pull the star players in to yet another group and sort them alphabetically so you have quicker access to them when wheeling & dealing. The personal collection stuff, just sort however will get you the most enjoyment.

Then change your mind and re-sort them all some other way, because isn't the sorting half the fun of collecting anyway?

[bangsportscards]

As DaClyde mentioned I like the year, brand, nummerical organizational approach.

And he's right, pending your overall goals, that's how you'll make decisions and you can also set apart specific players too.

Using myself as an example, I'm thinking of creating an all college campaign and have thus sorted some cards by division and teams.

Thanks for the discussion to gather ideas :)

Brian

[mrveggieman]

My favorite cards to collect are basketball and football skill position players. (QB, RB, WR, TE). I sort all my cards by position and place them into albums. I use the albums from the pananin adrenalyn cards. I have thousands of cards to sort through and I am working on them as time permits putting them in albums and pulling out duplicates and other cards for trade bate. When I was buying a lot of cards I was pulling out the ones that I wanted to keep and placing them in to keep boxes (but there were completely out of order) and putting everything else in trade sale boxes. When I finally decided it was time to start sorting I sat down on a saturday afteroon turned on the games and started storting away. It took me about a day to get one album together. It was tedious work but well worth it and I will be glad when I finally get my entire collection organized and can make some more trades. X-)

[mayday]

Being a teenager and having a small collection(1,000+ base, 50 GU+autos)I tend to keep my inserts, base, etc. in boxes stacked.

Since I don't have hundreds of GU and autos I keep them in a drawer sorted by brand(SPx, SPA, etc.).