General Forum

Well, I keep going back and forth in organizing my massive card collection. How should I organize by: Set/#, By Teams, By players last names/ Alphabetical order? I know I have OCD.

By set, then by year.

You'll probably get tons of different answers but I organize by year, then set, then card #.  Pretty much the way it's organized here.

what do you do with all the common cards?  I was thinking soft sleeve $0.50 to $2.00, $2.50 and up top load.  Just not sure best method.  I have a massive collection.  Maybe keep $1.00 and up I don't know it's crazy man

thank you

I think you'll be sorry you asked :)

I'm a set collector.  That is, commons are just as much part of the sets as stars.  Once I get to around 50% set completion for vintage or about 75% completion for modern, they go into a set binder.  FST (doubles) from those sets go into 3K/5K boxes by year, set, and card # order.

For those sets I'm collecting but don't yet meet that threshold, they stay in 3K/5K boxes by year, set, and then card # order.  They move into a binder when I reach 50%/75%.  Same for sets that I'm not trying to complete (I can't yet get myself to get rid of those, but I should).

I don't use toploaders except for the "cream of the crop" cards - those cards my daughter and I pull from packs that she/we freak out about.  There are only about 4-5 of those, they go in toploaders and on a shelf in the living room.

I know - a weird combination of arbitrary and OCD...

ripkencards wrote:

what do you do with all the common cards?  I was thinking soft sleeve $0.50 to $2.00, $2.50 and up top load.  Just not sure best method.  I have a massive collection.  Maybe keep $1.00 and up I don't know it's crazy man

Set collector here as well. As mentioned, my sets are also set up by year, set name and card number as found in here. For context, to start, everything is stored in 800ct boxes. None of my sets are in penny sleeve. Sets I have received with sleeves have had them removed. There are only a handful of cards that are in top loaders. But these are vintage RCs or top tier stars or very, high value modern RC (like triple digits). They all sit "naked" in the box and well packed to prevent movement. No arbitrary value when they get extra protection, the ones that are in top loaders are the most obvious one needing a little extra love.

what determines the value?? forget the value..

I keep both my duplicates and complete sets separate from other cards.  For the not-set, non-duplicate cards, I organize them by brand, then by year.  From there I organize by team and the players alphabetically within each team.  I find it easier to find individual cards when sorted by team instead of looking up the card number.

I think it makes a difference what your overall collecting goals are.

Set collecting, team collecting,player collecting?

And what are you trying to use the db for? Logging collection only, trading duplicates?

Mark