Sunday, April 17, 2011

My Massive Mess - A Reply to the Sunday Question

Marie, over at A Cardboard Problem, posed this week's question (er, questions, rather):

Do you find yourself behind on putting cards for your personal collection away? What do you do with all the inserts, parallels, and cards of the teams and guys you don't collect?

Rather than just reply, I thought I would write about it here.  In fact, I think I have written about it before, though I can't remember just when or what the circumstances were that prompted it.

Am I behind on putting cards for my personal collection away?  Oh, my, yes!  As I've talked about here before, I put my cards into "The Card Collector" card program.  Adding cards to my collection is a three-step process.  First, I have cards that have not been entered into the database.  These are cards that are from recent (and, honestly, from not-so-recent) trades and gifts.  I would have to guess that I have 3000+ cards that fall into this category.  They are in 800-count boxes, envelopes and loose on my computer desk.  Then, I have cards in 800-count boxes that have been put into the database but have not been put into pocket pages and binders.  I would say I have 5 or 6 of those easily (so, that's about 4800 cards in that category).  Then, I have cards in dated binders.

I don't know how other collectors feel about this, but I just have a hard time finding the "want to" when it comes to sorting through the cards to enter into my database.  It's even harder to find the desire to move the cards from the 800-count boxes into binder pages.  Actually, I have been throwing around the idea of putting my entire collection into 800-count boxes.  I have two of the BCS 32-box shelf units and those boxes (800-count each) would make for easy storage for most of my collection.  Then I could keep binders for the oversized stuff.  It just feels wrong to keep my personal collection cards in boxes instead of binders.  I know there is no one out there who will show up at my doorstep, asking to look through my collection only to be disappointed that they are stored in boxes (should I go that route).  But, binders provide an easy way to look at the cards.  I can flip through pages, organized by brand and date.  Sticking them in boxes, even organized by brand and date, just seems so... wrong. 

What's funny is that I know there are collectors with way more cards than I have, and I know there is no way they have a million cards in binders. Well, I suppose they *could,* but I doubt it.  So, why should I feel bad about considering putting mine in boxes with 10,000+ Indians cards?  I dunno.

The short answer to the original question: Yes. I'm behind.

The next question: What do I do with cards of teams I don't collect?  This is a bit more complicated.  See, I have two collections: Indians cards and non-Indians cards.  It is well-known that I collect all kinds of Jim Thome cards, but I also have things like Eddie Murray's rookie card along with a slew of others (by slew, I mean roughly 3000).  As for the rest of the cards, I have those in non-organized boxes that build and build until I have enough to do a Tribecards Giveaway.  I haven't done one since my "final" one some time ago, but I have building cards up to have another at some point.  Probably for Christmas.  Meanwhile, I set some aside for sending to folks that I've been trading with for many years now.

5 comments:

  1. I only put complete or almost complete team sets into binders. All the rest are in monster boxes with little yearly dividers made up of top loaders with the year wrote on them. If you look at my online want list it is color coded by if something is in a binder or not. This makes it faster to put cards away because that way I don't have to pull the binder for a specific year only to find out it I have that team set stored in a monster box.

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  2. I know what you mean about putting your PC into boxes. I can't do it. I'd rather it piled up until I have to spend a day or two getting it all done. It's much better just because it's easier to pull out a binder and be able to look at your collection. The only part of my PC in boxes are the autographs and game used cards because they are in hard cases.

    I thought about getting one of those card collecting software programs a while back but I use Excel for my 2 main guys (Cano, Pujols) and Beckett for the rest. That's as motivated as I can get for inventory logging.

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  3. Like yourself, I am way behind in sorting my cards out to the boxes that my cards will call their home. I have two larger boxes that I put all my Indians cards in; one is for pre Jacobs era cards and players, and the other, and the larger of the two, is for post opening of Jacobs Field. I have the cards in each box alphatelically by players last name, but I have to find time to go through and sort the cards out by make for each player and downsize my multiple copies. Then I have another box with Indians cards that need to go into their bigger boxes. Then I have team sets of the Indians in a binder. As for other cards from other teams, I have tons of them and have them sorted by teams for the most part ready for trades, but finances have been so tight that I have not been able to complete my ends of the trades I have made proposals for. I want to apologize to anyone who reads this that is waiting on cards from me. I do hope to get them out sometime in the coming months. And like you Dave, I will still trade for any Tribe cards that others may have. Happy Collecting!

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  4. Who isn't behind on cataloging their cards?! When I started my blog I wanted to have all of my player collection and team collections listed on my blog for the world to see. Doing that meant when I added a new card to the list I had to do it twice. 1) in my database on my computer and 2) my new Google Doc list for the blog.

    I seemed to keep up with this for a good while, but ultimately I fell behind. I did ok with this prior to my blog, but now I have so many new cards coming in from trades, group breaks and eBay purchases it's crazy hard to keep up with the volume.

    I'm trying really hard to get some of the sets I'm building in pages along w/ my various player collections. I too have thought about leaving things boxed up, but I just love having them in pages.

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  5. Wow! Based on the responses, I feel like we're all going through this. Thanks for some of the different methods and ideas!

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