General Forum

So I have ammased around ~20K cards and store them as such:

• Everything is in 2 row shoebox boxes, sorted by sport and year.
• All cards over 3$ in rigid plastics, packed seperatly, sorted by price.
• All cards over 1$ in soft sleeves, packed with commons
• All cards over 75$ graded
• I use book pricing on COMC.com as a base for value.

How does this rate with what you do?

I'm a set collector, so arrange mine by the set.  I put all that I can in plastic pages and binders.  As a kid collecting in the 70s, my sets from 69-77 went in some paper binders you could buy for cards back then.  However, 30 years later the pages have put marks across the corners of the card where they are held in (costly mistake).  Those that I haven't yet put in binders are mostly in 5000 count boxes with dividers separating them, some in 500 count boxes, and some in smaller card boxes.

Almost my entire collection is stored in white cardboard boxes; usually that came to me filled with other cards. I prefer the 900 count boxes but can't get them anymore; I use 500 count or larger, though I am sure I could locate some of the 200 count boxes if I needed them. I also have around 10 5000 count boxes but some of them are empty, waiting for future use.

I will never, ever put most of my cards in plastic pages- I learned not to the hard way, when the pages attacked the UV coating on several hundred cards. I removed them then (this was around 2001) and now the only time they go in plastic pages is for scanning.

The one exception to that is the tall cards Topps and later Fleer/Skybox issued. They are just so darn hard to store that if I leave them in my preferred white boxes they slide around and get damaged, so most of them are in pages, although I hate the thought of it. Until I can come up with something better it'll have to do.

My 1 of 1s go in the two piece magnet holders from Ultra Pro and if I had more of them I'd put the numbered to 10 or less in there, but I'd rather spend my money on the cards themselves.

Not sure if this will work to post the picture, but here is a portion of my boxes. 

[img]http://images54.fotki.com/v77/photos/3/348354/1236810/100_3753-vi.jpg[/img]

Here's the link to the picture on my website if it doesn't. http://public.fotki.com/ElCaminoBilly/trading-cards/nba-basketball/nba_collection/100-3753.html

I collect University of Michigan players, Miami dolphins players, Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Cavs and some WWE and UFC relic cards and auto's. All players from any of those are in top loaders and magnet cases depending on thickness of cards. Then they are stored in 3200 count shoe boxes by name alphabetically. I also have made a list on the computer of all those players including name, year, auto's, jerseys, pro, graded, etc. I also do not collect any doubles, unless they are an insert and s/n different or have relic or patch or auto's.

All the rest I store in 3200 count boxes by name and team. Better players are in top loaders, semi's in clear sleeves and rest just stored as is. I also have some displayed in autographed plaques w/ an 8 X 10.

So just wanted to put my 2 cents in. I am somewhere in the 10k for total collection.

Currently organizing my collection.  It's become quite the task.

everything i keep in my personal collection is in count boxes, inserted in top loaders or cases. everything else is in count boxes and depending if a star or prospect held in loaders or penny sleeves by teams or indvidual players depending on how important they are and if i can trade off fast. everything else is just kept in count boxes awaiting to give away for trade!!

I am currently organizing my collection. I have well over500k cards so it is quite a task. I am organizing them by palyer and year. All cards are going into plastic pages unless over $1.00 then placed in softsleeves or for more expensive cards rigids and screwdowns. I am going away from boxes because I am constantly upgrading my collection. Makes it easier to see and enjoy my collection with minimal handling.

As to how I store them inside the boxes, my collection is currently sorted by subject. I sorted them that way to take account of how many I had for each subject, and I have not sorted them back into sets yet. When I do that they will be stored in number order. For the NASCAR cards I sorted them by subject in 2009...for the NBA I sorted them by subject in 2003. (with a partial resorting for new additions in 2011) I will finish scanning them before I sort them back into sets; I don't expect to finish this decade. For the non-sports cards, it's a little harder to sort them by subject (as more of them cover events than specific people or things; I also have much, much less of them so most people or things I have only a few of, unlike some of my sports cards where I'm pushing 1000 cards of a specific person) and I sorted them by subject only in 2012. I never created my chart of what I had though. I found the Database then and decided to scan card backs too (the fronts are done) so I won't do the chart until I finish scanning the card backs. I'm OCD and am compelled to document what I have of each person/subject.