General Forum

Moving my cards (Racing) to Plano (1100 card) boxes from the sheets,

debating on whether to sort them by year or by manufacturer.

A number of manufacturers will require multiple boxes.

One Action Packed will only fit about a 1/3 of the number of cards in the

boxes due to thickness.

Just looking for opinions.

The best way to sort is based on what will make it easiest for you to find and retreive a card.

yes... the most easiest way to the objective you want. for example- i have ( 4 ) four row boxes of just one player only in it and another box with the players team sorted by year for team cards and then another row for invidual players of that team. whichever works for you to file the easist and like Cigs said to retrieve or show.

I have tried many configurations of storage over the past 30 years. I've stuck with one configuration for the past 15 years now for ANY sport. I store them by year and alphabetically by manufacturer and brand name. Keeping years together seems to make it easier for me to find the cards I'm trying to pull for a trade/sell. Keeping releases for that year in ABC order by manufacturer & brand name helps find the cards faster too. For Racing cards, it's much easier to find Maxx cards if they are before your Press Pass cards, and it's much easier to find your Press Pass Eclipse cards if they are before your Optima, Premium, Trackside or VIP cards. It's also easier to find your Pinnacle cards if they are before Press Pass releases or your Traks, Upper Deck or Wheels cards if they are after Press Pass cards. See my reasoning here? Do what you feel works best for you, but I had to tell you how I do it for a comparison.

I am completely with you on how you sort.  I am a huge baseball card collector and used to have them by team until 5 years ago.  Since 5 years I have been resorting my entire collection based on how you describe.  To me as a complete set collector (hence my username) it gives me the opportunity to see what cards I need to finish a set.

I keep mine by player, manufactor, then by year. Sometimes I will keep certain ones together, like some SLU cards or insert sets. For the most part I use top-loaders in 1,800 count boxes.

Albums, and pages haven't worked out too good for me, but I have about a dozen of those for a few sets, and subsets/common base cards of players I collect. Like to trim that down by at least half.

Picked up a good auction for approx 7,000 cards (Racing) in May,

Pushed me back to clean up the clutter I had with my own collection

I hadn't messed with in 10 years or so.

My collection in sheets/binders, can see where then sitting around the top

row collected dust/dirt on the cards.  

As I am either focused on an activity or ignore it, think putting them in storage boxes

will keep them cleaner/nicer for longer.  Will have between 15-20k before this round of

activity gets pushed back for a time.  Hoping a little better organization will help when

I do come back to it.

Oh the pain of trying to figure out how to store and organize the collection and PC

Complete Chris,

Exactly. That is how I sorted for years and years. Some years back (somewhere in the 1980s-90s) I re-sorted my baseball alphabetically by player name, team cards went under the team, two player cards usually would go with first player listed, league leader cards by the number one guy, checklists under "C" for checklist and the other oddball cards by whatever subject or title they were.. This was way before all the nasty super collecting parallels and 1/1s and short print variants and 20 thousand cards per player per set with 20-30 sets per year like we have now. And collectors called the 90s the OVERPRODUCED "junk wax" years? Needless to say this meant contanstly shifting cards around. I tried to keep everything in binders in those years but my supplies only went as far as the Ms or maybe as far as the Ss. The remaining letter sections were boxed. A few years later I made the mistake of trying to reorganize things and stopped somewhere between the first and second thirds of the collection. I got back into mainstream collecting in the early 2000s, after a hiatus somewhere around 1993/94 to about 2004 I think my reorganization attempt was just after this hiatus. I haven't recovered since and had a move during that unorganzed/unsorted time.

Well....since joining TCDB I realized my system sucked big time. Big reason, I couldn't trade/buy/sell in a timely manner, matter-of-fact I still can't. Why?, too many cards, in too many places....so, many months ago [before softball started] I started the RESORTING & REORGANIZATION PLAN......going well, but slooooooowly. Here is the R&RP:

Note: All boxes by manufacturer, and year.

Room#1a - BASEBALL [surplus]-  All manufacturers [except Topps]

Room#1b - FOOTBALL ?[surplus] - All manufacturers; NON-SPORTS ?[trade/sell]

Room#1c - HOCKEY, BASKETBALL - [getting rid of them by sell/trade. ; STICKERS,PUZZLES etc. ?- [surplus] ; ?CARDS that still need to be entered in the collection. Stars, RC, ERR etc.;  PERIODICALS.

?Room#2 - ?Sorting and shipping area; BASEBALL - almost All Topps [surplus], inc. 1960s, 1970s Sets; boxes A-Z of Stars, RC etc [some surplus, some sale/trade]. Any games - Classic etc.; Unopened wax boxes - all sports.

Room#3 - THE COLLECTION - ALL  ?Baseball and Football Sets; Stars, RC in albums, Team albums etc. They are all catalogued by colored dot stickers referenced in SSs. All memorabilia, figures, helmets etc. Featured periodicals. Not for sale or trade.

Room#4 - Ebay, Sportslots, TCDB cards etc. to be sold, traded and shipped.

?Believe it or not that's just the tip of the iceberg....plenty more work to do...AND I STILL CAN'T FIND CARDS YOU REQUEST!

Woh is me......~BOB~