General Forum

I've been collecting Kirby Puckett since I was a kid in the late '80s, but never had a very cohesive method to sorting my collection - I used to just add new cards into 9-card pages as they were acquired. Well, now I'm up over 600 cards and I'm trying to get a bit more organized. Recently, I've been sorting in binders by set type, which seemed to work well for the 80's-90's sets, but I'm not sure that makes the most sense given how newer cards are categorized (95% inserts & parallels).

I'm interested in others' approach to organizing their large single player collections. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Back before entering the set collector society I used to keep the players separate in binders following the TCDB set order, so even though there may be a multitude of VARs within a set they'd all be together in order according to how the database archived them.

When the realization hit that I was about to get serious with a Robin Yount PC, I created a checklist of all his cards known to exist by year, and organized my sheets that way. This makes it easier to see what's still needed (especially with the older issues).

With all the newer color and pattern variations, it made sense to keep all items grouped as such - I keep schedules, artwork, oversized, coins, etc. alongside the standard-size cards of the same year.

Plus, when flipping through sheets in that order, you can watch the evolution of team jerseys, trading card designs, and see how he aged!

By year (oldest to newest) then alphabetically by brand, leaving a few spots open just in case other cards come along

Makes sense, and that's more or less what I'm doing now. I've been leaving open spots in binder pages for cards I'm missing, but that doesn't seem logical for the newer limited SN prints I'll never get - I'd have dozens and dozens of empty pages, lol. I think my OCD is just struggling with how to manage empty spots in the binders.

If you use this site to track your haves and wants, I would keep them in the order they appear on here.  I understand the problem with the rare issues; I personally would not leave space for those but would keep them in a separate binder / box.  Knowing any SN or MEM card will be found there, I can locate it easy enough without having many empty pages in a binder.

This is exactly what I do.

This is also what I do but I don't leave spaces, (I can organize these things very quickly,) and I have them organized in a weird set pattern, (Donruss, Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer, Score, Bowman, O-Pee-Chee, Leaf, Pinnacle, Classic, TCMA, Ted Williams, and then other assorted odd ball sets.) I am also a Kirby PC collector and it does get hard organizing and finding what your missing for even 250 cards. LOL.

BigEd76 wrote:

By year (oldest to newest) then alphabetically by brand, leaving a few spots open just in case other cards come along

Ditto for organization. My player PCs are generally in boxes (all top loaded) except for the most common base cards which I keep in binders (since my player PCs overlap with my team PCs and all base/common inserts generally go in binders. 

Thanks for all the responses. It sounds like a good consensus follow something like BigEd's approach, which makes sense. I keep my haves/wants updated here, and also track on an offline spreadsheet, so I'm generally able to easily find what I have and still need. I'm just looking for the best way to store and view all the cards, allowing for additions without having to frequently re-shuffle dozens of cards. 

Intermittent open spots seems to be the way to go, that way I can keep mostly full pages and still have room to add without ever having to shuffle more than a few pages worth of cards. I'll just have to keep my OCD in check.