General Forum

One in the front, one in the back. This prevents the pages from slipping between the rings and the cover - pinching and damaging the cards in the process.

I'll join Madtay57's question. I have over 60 binders full of of cards. I don't think there are sheet lifters in many, if any at all. I've never understood the purpose of those things. All my cards have been in binders now for almost 30 years. I looked at every single card, and took about 1/3 of them out, about four years ago. There are were problems. So, although I'm unlikely to alter my stubborn behavior, I am pretty curious to hear the purpose of sheet lifters and any appalling stories of reckless people who didn't use them and suffered horrible calamities....

v3

One of the items I recently acquired was a 1978 Topps set, in pages in a binder. The cards in the 1,4,& 7 positions in the last 3 or 4 pages (and yes, they were back to back, so 6 per page) were damaged. I'll see if scans show the damage and post them later.

I believe you. No need for visual proof on my account, at least. Thanks.

v3

All great info. Thanks! Off to dig for lifters in the garage.

That's the main reason I stopped using pages/binders. If the pages are any less than 2/3 full, they tend to bend or lay in ways that always bends the cards. I realize that humidity and other things like that can play a role, but it seems like all the card are warped in some way. I use just corrugated now until I can find some way to avoid the warping. I have so many empty pages I don't know what to do with.

I'll just add my 2 cents. I usually go with 3" binders. Smaller than that and you can't get enough pages in it. Larger than that and the full binder is really heavy. And for sure go with D-rings. Worth the extra cost. I usually buy Office Depot brand. Sheet lifters are good if you've got a few too many pages in the binder as they help protect the front and last pages.

I have most of my base sets in identical 3" D ring binders. With sets getting larger and wanting to include insert sets, I have decided to go with various size notebooks that will comfortably hold the extra pages of cards. I notice that places like Staples or Office Max, or  places online have notebooks of all sizes usually running in 1/2" to 1" increments. i know this will result in different size notebooks for different sets, but am ok with that. I was even going to use different colors for different sports. I also store my notebooks flat, I can get four to a shelf on the shelf system I have. This is a bit of a hassle when needing the bottom notebook, but prevents page curl when you don't have a full notebook. Also agree with the page lifters, have seen the damage that happens when you don't use them.

Thanks for the fantastic responses. I was on a similar vein with 3" binder, but learned something new about the D-ring and the sheet lifters.

Wal-Mart had the D-ring binder and some dividers (as of now, I'm going to use dividers to separate "base", "variations", and inserts. That will probably change at some point in the future, with as much as I change my collection around), but they didn't have any sheet lifters. I will need to order some of those, as I intend to utilize as many safety procedures as possible. The flood in January scared me enough that I'm willing to protect even a 1988 Fleer set :D

Tonight has turned into date night with the lady, so I'll be paging tomorrow evening. Regardless, thanks for the input and I hope some others found this thread as helpful as I did!

You can get 2 or 4 packs (not sure) of binders at Costco.  They are all white, but pretty sure they are cheaper there than anywhere else.  And they're D ring.