General Forum

I have that tray too. What a difference in sorting? Almost makes sorting enjoyable. lol.

Depends on your ordering sytem. I have all my extras in 5,000-count monster boxes and they are by year, then by brand. When I had 3 monsters that were unsorted, I broke them out by decade, then stored them, took a decade, sorted into years, put them away, took a year, sorted into brands.. Maybe a tad longer in the log run, but never dealing with too many stacks. Sometimes LARGE stacks (but when they get too tall to work with, just move them off to the side of have boxes waiting for them), but never too many stacks. But I would say stick to a method that keeps the number of stacks small.

Another example - when my pal Lee would bust cases to make team sets, we'd sort them into the league divisions first, then the teams in those divisions. No more than 6 stacks working at any one time.

Sort one box at a time and use a labeled index card between each grouping of cards, dependent on how you're sorting them. When you havehave all the boxes completed, you can then combine them based on your organization choice.

I've been sorting one box at a time, and then combining them. I don't know how it will work out in the end. I've sorted too many boxes without combining them, though, and now combining them is going to be a pain.

This is essentially what I'm doing. Most of my boxes are old and in need of replacing. So I'm going through box by box and adding it to the Database before marking it as "done". Right now, I'm plugging away through football. Once I get a count of what I have, I'll order some new boxes from BCW Supplies for whatever I need, take a weekend, and take all the boxes I have for football and lay them out.

The plan is to sort into the new boxes by team, and as I do so, reconcile with what I've entered into the Database as a second check. Since I don't collect football, these boxes will likely not get added to much unless I buy a bulk collection or a chunk of cards from Goodwill or the like, but that's another problem for another time. After football, I can do the same with basketball, and finally baseball, which is where the majority of my collection lies.

I like Dan's tip above about sorting into divisions, and then in to teams, but since I want my teams to be alphabetical I may just do four at a time - that can be decided later.

A few years ago I had to sort my uncle's collection to get it ready for my aunt to sell.  Talk about a mess( he had dementia, so it's was understandabe why it was a mess).  First it was sorted by sport, then brand, followed by year and then into numerical order.  I don't think there is a "painless" way to sort , it's time consuming and some of those sets can make you go cross-eyed trying to read the numbers.

I'm UGHing my way through the Pool Table Hoard I bought, about 1/8 through the blob. I am recollating all his boxed sets and found a few with missing cards but pretty good so far ..... only a few Shaq cards been stolen from basketball sets. Lots of partial sets needing between 5 to 50 cards, the traders have been quite minimal. I bought 7 5000 counts to help in the sorting process but to make this story end ............ when did you take photos of my office!!!!!

LOL loved the table tip .............. I second it!!! ROFL

And don't turn on that fan!

I've thought about doing that with my Yuge Very Yuge Collection.I've also thought of just shoving the whole damn collection in the face of a bunch of other collectors and say "here you keep". Seriously thought I have thought that maybe this one box at a time thing is a way to go.

 1 box at a time, crazy.   i would sort by brand/manufacturer after a couple boxes you will have empty boxes from the sorting. put by brand into the boxes per row for now until more are empty, eventually brand per box, after brand sorting then by year/set into the same box sorting from should work.  myself I do by sport and then stars/hof/insert (if not a star) I am not going to waste my time with the commons unless I plan on building a set