General Forum

I've got two basic questions I need your expert opinions on:

1. I noticed a few months ago that a 90-91 Skybox card that I had stored in a binder in a 9-card pocket page had discolored. It was stored without a plastic sleeve. It had not been exposed to light for any extended length of time so I assumed it was the plastic that caused it. I don't know what brand of pocket it was, but it is made of a harder and thicker plastic than Ultra Pro Pocket Pages. I still use that thicker plastic, but now insert the cards in an Ultra Pro sleeve. Is that enough protection, or was the cause something else? There were no other cards affected from what I could tell, but they are all in plastic Ultra Pro sleeves now in that thicker pocket page.
2. A similar question, I have another binder with a different type of plastic pages not the hard thicker as previously mentioned, but softer, yet not really much thinner. It seems less transparent, but not as thin or transparent as Ultra Pro pages. Those cards are stored without plastic sleeves in those binders, too. Should I keep them in sleeves?
3. I collect team sets and particular players from those teams. I'm huge on displaying cards for my enjoyment and am working with my son-in-law to make a flippable display frame for some teams. Those will include the whole team including the star players. However, with team sets that aren't going to be displayed would you keep the star players with the team, or would you separate the player from the team? I know it's personal preference, but I'm honestly torn about what to do.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Question 1   Could it be that the plastic discolored?  If this is so, I would remove them or protect them with penny sleeves. I remember back in 1980's there where pages that would chemically change over a short time, One problem was they would become hard and brittle. I changed all these out and gave them away.

Question 2   I store my cards w/o sleeves but I do on some if only one card to a slot, helps card from sliding out of pocket. I also do so if I expect to handle the card a few times. 

Qurstion 3  Depending on value at time of aquiring, I may have one in both places. If not I will put it on my want list

Q1 - I have never had a card altered by being in a page. I bought a set of Sportflics that was already in pages, from a long time ago, a while back that had turned very sticky (got a full refund, bought a boxed set instead). That's the closest I've seen to that. Not sure what happened there.

Q2 - I have a couple cards that are in sleeves in the pages, but mostly because they are old, and damaged in some way, and didn't want their damage (ink, wax, etc) to damage the pages or another card.

Q3 - If you collect the team, collect THE TEAM. I collect the Phillies (as everyone probably knows by now!), I have cards going back to 1951 across 9 binders (in year, manufacturer, set, alphabetical by last name [roughly]* order within the binders). ALL players are in there - Schmidt, Carlton, Bunning, Ashburn, Allen, etc. It's not my "Most of the Phillies" collection. One minor exception**.

* - rough alpha order definition - if you're interested, I'm going to describe my page layout in great detail. Maybe you like it, maybe it gives you an idea of what you would prefer for your own collection. Maybe you don't care (and in that case, skip the rest of this post). All team sets start with the checklist or team photo card. Then it's regular base set cards (non-subset cards). Then the subsets, with them being in whatever order I fancied that day. Sometimes All-Sars, then highlights, then other specials (in action, super vet, etc.). Then the inserts from that set (newer years). The 1980s would have the Fleer star stickers and the boxed set cards next, and the like in the other companies. When it makes sense, sets have their own page. In some cases, if there was Hostess and Kraft in the same year, and there was only 1 Phillie is each, I'll put Hostess in spot #1, and Kraft in spot #4*** (see below for page slot numbering). I do put the cards back to back (I would have about 50% more pages in use if I didn't do that!), so that card #10 is behind #3, 11 behind 2 and 12 behind 1 and so on throughout the page. Again, certainly not syaing this is how you should do this, but how I started doing this back in the 1980s and just stuck with it (because it worked for me). I made a couple tweaks along the way, but it's been mostly the same since about 1982 or 83. And the collection now stands at nearly complete for all the Topps cards from 1956 to 2016 minus 4 cards (a 1963, a 1966, and two 1967s). I also have almost all of the base set cards from the other companies and releases from 1981 to 1992 and various full team sets from 1993 to present. There are also a plethora of assorted, random cards from base sets and insert/parallel sets that there are 1-5 of. 

** - Exception - My son decided he wanted to collect Darren Daulton and he raided my Phillies binders if I didn't have extras for his collection. He even pilfered my 1990 Upper Deck (the one I had him sign for me way back in 1990). However, that binder of about 500 different Daulton cards lives with the 9 binders of Phillies (there is a some duplication as I have tried to keep a base card in my binders), so technically, there are 10 binders of Phillies cards!

** - Page layout:

• Spot 1 | Spot 2 | Spot 3
• ----------------------------------
• Spot 4 | Spot 5 | Spot 6
• ----------------------------------
• Spot 7 | Spot 8 | Spot 9

Dan,

Re Q1 response: Have you used different types of pocket pages? And, part of me wonders about the cause for the discoloration because like I said no other card was affected as such. Also, I had other Skybox cards in the same type pages.

Re Q2 response: Do you use sleeves when cards are stored in top loaders?

Re Q3 response: I like your organization, but if a team set, including all the associated cards don't coincide with multiples of nine, do you start up a new year or brand where the previous one ended, or do you leave empty spaces and begin new sheets for different sets?

Q1 - I've used a variety of pages over the years (I started putting cards in pages in 1982 or 1983 - I hadn't even HEARD of Ultra-Pro then).. Never had a problem. I do remember seeing something in one of the hobby publications before I even started sheeting cards about a chemical in some pages that discolored and ate away at cards. So maybe by time I jumped into that arena, the page manufacturers had "cleaned" up their act.

Q2 - Yes. Always.

Q3 - Empty space. If I find another card, for whatever reason, for that year (say I found another 1990 Donruss variation), I would have to move all the Fleer, Score, Topps, & Upper Deck cards to accommodate 1 card. That ain't happening! (That's another thing, variations go at the end too.) So I try to keep only Donruss in page 1 & 2, Drakes in 3, Fleer in 4 & 5, Hostess/Kraft in 6, Leaf in 7, OPC in 8, Score in 9 & 10, Star in 11, Topps in 12 & 13 (maybe 14), and Upper Deck in 15 & 16. That's just an example. If I found a K-Mart card or 2 for that year, I would probably move the Kraft to position 7, and put the KMart card(s) in row 2 (spot 4, etc.). 

vroomed:  Loved reading through your organizational guidelines for your team sets.  Thank you for sharing!  Presently, I'm in the process of logging my entire Mets collection in the Database, and everything is stored in various boxes at this point.  I'd like to transfer everything into binders at some point -- once I get everything sorted and logged -- but finding a system that's satisfactory has been vexing thus far.  I'm pretty OCD, but I also love the randomness and aesthetics of having diverse 9-pocket pages.  So I'll probably never settle on something that scratches all the itches, so to speak.  

But, the more personal accounts of team collections and their organization methods I read, the better served I think I'll be.  So, thanks again!

I started collecting around 1990 or so. It sounds like the pages you are referring to are from a company called BBCW. I don't know if they are still around. The cards I put in those sleeves will never come out because I would end up destroying the card trying. The pages are almost solid plastic now. On some of the pages, theres a like a oily sheen on the inside of the plastic. I don't have any expensive cards or sets in those pages. I bought Ultra pro pages when they first came out.

If the pages are both pvc and acid free then you should be fine.  Also, most are now uv-protected so even if they get some sun they are not suppose to fade.  I don't risk this but it is an added bonus.  The pages from when we were kids were made from pvc or had acid in them and they got hard, brittle like after about 5 years.  

Glad you appreciated the detailed description. When you have 9-10 binders full of one team, spanning 66 or 67 years, you have to come up with some sort of scheme to keep it all. The way I did it actually helped me quite a bit when I did find this site (becaue I wanted to checklist what I had and what was missing). Is it perfect? Not at all. But I don't think I could ever make it perfect, so I went with this just so that everything was in a spot to be found. Now I can find anything in my collection almost instantaneously. My extras, that's another story. Takes 5 minutes. :)

Finest and Easy - The plastic has gotten harder, so I'll probably end up replacing it. I'll look if I can read the company imprint, but you've described them to the "T". I noticed the sticking with an inexpensive card - it still bothered me - and then the discoloration of another, and that's why I added the penny sleeves. Thanks for your input.

Dan - Do you leave spaces for cards you don't have in the team sets you're still compiling, or do you move them as you acquire cards?