General Forum

Just sitting here going through a 3500 ct box full of cards for my Player PC and wondered

So does anyone stores their collection by player? I would assume most if not all store by set?

me, my brother, my boss all do. So that makes 3 besides you (they are both members but don't post on the forums)

Can I ask your reasoning?

I have some by sets and some by players. 

I gather both have there advantages and disadvantages

All my cards are sorted by player in alphabetical order. I do this mainly because I am more of a player collector not a set collector. For me it is easier to locate cards for trading with people this way.

As an old timer who collected in the 50s and 60, the only way to collect was by the set as there were usually only one card per player per year.   If I was collecting now,  I would go with team set storage or player.   Sets are just too unwieldy nowadays,  at least the subsets and parallel are.

I keep mine by player. If I were doing sets, and when I used to do more sets, I'd have to have extras of certain players.

Really it depends on the set though. I'm not going to leave a Montana RC in a binder with the '81 set, even if I had 10 of them. But I have his '82 in with that set as I have a few of those.
 

My Royals cards are sorted by set, however, my PC cards are all by player.  Then again, those are mostly in binders for now, but it is a lot easier that way to see what I have and could still get.

I keep mine by team, and mix sports so all the teams from one city are together.  The only exception to that are my auto's, memorabilia and serial numbered cards which I have by player in binders.

Most cards go into boxes. i have certain players I collect which go into binders. I collect Phillies and Astros, which also go into binders. And I have binders, of what I call my reference cards, a sample from every set and insert set that I have. I used to store by player but this got harder and harder the more cards I got. Storing by set and year is easier. I've got some 98,000 cards so shortcuts must be made.

My PC storage is somewhat complicated. My non-PC is pretty easy though. To start with, most of my collection is in Ultra-Pro pages inside binders (usually 3 inch D-rings). Cards are stored by year and set for anything less than 75 cents BV. After that, cards are stored by year/set by BV level (75-cent cards together, then $1 cards, then $1.25 cards, etc.). I don't update those as much as I used to but I still know the general album to find them.

As for PC cards, they are sorted by team, then by year, company, and brand. Favorite players are separated further. For example, my Carolina Panthers collection is sorted in many ways. I have three 3" binders and one of those is a new one. The first one includes my main Panthers collection of DeAngelo Williams cards and Steve Smith cards and then a bunch of retired Panthers players (Muhsin Muhammad, Brad Hoover, John Kasey, Ricky Proehl, etc.). The second album is ALL Panthers cards that aren't in player collections, PLUS current player collections at the front (Luke Kuechly, Cam Newton, Kelvin Benjamin, Jonathan Stewart, etc.). The third (and newest) album has a bunch of Panthers players that were Panthers before but aren't now, but may not be retired yet (Julius Peppers, Jon Beason, etc.). It also includes all AU and MEM cards that don't belong to a specific player collection.

This is just my NFL example for my favorite team. I also have a GB Packers collection and a NE Patriots collection. I have an MLB STL Cardinals collection that has many albums too! All of those have the same idea for my storage of them. Ozzie Smith has his own 3" album, Stan Musial and Lou Brock share a 1" notebook, and Yadier Molina and Bob Gibson share another 1" notebook. The rest of my Cardinals collection takes up two more 3" albums!