General Forum

I finally finished sorting about 6,500 cards into their sets, now I am working on my Dallas Cowboys cards (Yes I'm a Cowboys fan...the haterade is over there on the counter.)   So my question is 2 fold...

1) How do y'all sort your team cards? (by set, by player, by year, etc...)

2) Do you pull your team cards from sets and put them with your team or leave them?

Note: I only have 1 team that I collect for...other than that I build sets. 

Set cards stay with the sets. All other team cards get sorted by year, set, card # in their own team specific box 

My team sets are in binders first sorted by YEAR, then within each YEAR they're by PRODUCT (Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck, etc).  Each YEAR/PRODUCT's pages are in order first with TEAM/LOGO/TEAM CHECKLIST card(s), then Manager/Head Coach, the the rest alphabetically, cards with multiple players (of same team) are at the end.

I don't collect that way, but I do sort my scans that way. It turns out that updating the team albums tends to be one of the most fun aspects of the Cardboard History Gallery. Every team has it's own album, and they are sorted chronologically, with each set in numerical order and years with multiple sets in alphabetical order. 

It's become a fun thing to take note of the first page and seeing when something gets onto it. The pages display 108 scans and in the NBA most teams have to be at least 1992-93 or older to make it into page one...but when I finish scanning all the 70s and 80s cards that will change. Some of the bigger teams like the Knicks, Lakers and Celtics already have to be in the 80s to crack the first page. 

It's even more fun with the NHL because I'm still new enough to the sport that some teams don't even have a second page yet, so every month I do my uploads leads to a wild change in the first page, except for the Rangers which I stumbled into having most of the 70s and 80s cards. While the second place team just hit 300 scans, the Rangers are closing in on 900. Doing the CHL teams has really helped me learn Canadian geography as well, since they are broken out by QMJHL, OHL and WHL. 

I just finally sorted and created the albums for the NASCAR Cup teams in January and it will be fun to see them grow as well. Most of the 1990s cards, my favorite era, are still awaiting scans so those albums are going to undergo a great amount of changes as I progress through scanning them. 

I also have baseball and football broken out by team and they will get filled in some day, I do have more than 2000 cards from each sport, although I don't actively collect them. Since it's not my main things I tend to push them off for later...some of them currently have only a handful of cards scanned. 

Eventually I'll get everything scanned and will just have to keep up with new additions. I'm both looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. I look forward to seeing everything done in full, to be able to browse my entire collection at any time, but I dread not having any scanning to do. It's been an almost daily part of my life for over a decade, and there's going to be a serious void when I have none left to do. I currently estimate around 500 days are required to finish, but I'm terrible at estimating time so it'll probably be longer. I'm ok with that.

Team sets are sorted by year, then alphabetically by manufacturer with the cards in numerical order.

Scott

Andrew, I've been leaning toward uniting team sets lately. I collect Astros and Cowboys, but also collect a bunch of players from each. I had been separating the players like Bagwell, Biggio, Meredith, and Hayes from the team, but then team sets look somewhat empty. So as I'm inventorying my collection, I'm considering putting them all together. I do collect some small sets and subsets, and if any Astros or Cowboys are in them they are kept with that set.

Thanks for the input...It's good to see different ways of doing things....

Right now I have bigger name players together...Aikman, Emmitt, Irvin, Rocket, Dak, etc....the rest are in a stack unsorted until I decide how I want to sort them...Been battling this dilemma for 2 days lol

As being a Robin Yount collector and a Milwaukee Brewers collector, I duplicate any cards that would overlap.  I have two (sometimes more) of each card of Robin's to make my brain feel better when looking at the specific binder. In specific product runs, I may have even more.  For example, my wife bought me a display for twenty cards that could be hung on the wall that has cases for cards.  I added the 20 Topps cards from 1975 through 1994 that made up the "complete card run".  I also have those cards in the Brewers binders, and in the binders that I have for Robin.  This way, I may have duplicates, but I would always be looking at the "complete set" that I was aiming to collect.  I do this for the Topps. Donruss, Fleer...and so on...

In the case of a card being in two personal collections, here's what I do:

I collect Syracuse alumni in the NFL and Oakland Raiders.  If I'm lucky enough to have dupes, no problem. If not, then here's an example:  Syracuse alum Art Thoms was also an Oakland Raider.  I keep Art Thoms cards in the Raiders binders.  In the Syracuse NFL binder I have an Art Thoms header card with a note "Raiders binder'.  I also scan and print paper copies of the front his cards for the Syracuse binder.  If I ever get a dupe I'll replace the paper copy.

I like to sort my teams by position, then alphabetical order, then chronologically.