General Forum

how do you guys organize your cards after adding to TCDB?  Team, Player or Set

I'm a set collector, so by set then by card #.

Sets that I'm trying to finish that I have over a certain percentage of cards go into binders, the others go into 3k or 5k boxes sorted in the same order as TCDb.

I've experimented with many different ways over the years but in the end have found basic year/set is best.  Often keeping it simple is best.

I am a hockey collector and I keep all my cards by set and card #. That being said if I only have a handful from a set then I just keep them together and not necessarily in # order. For players I PC that I am not currently trying to complete the set or are inserts are kept together by year. I currently only have my complete sets from the 80’s in binders everything else is in boxes.

I focus more on collecting players, rather than sets. I have a hierarchy as follows: 

1) San Diego Padres (my favorite team) 
2) HOFers,
3) MVPs, CYs, ROYs, and other awards
4) Players born in Mexico (honoring my heritage)
5) 3,000 hits, 3,000 Ks, 300 Wins, 300 saves, No-No's, and other achievements.
6) Other players I've enjoyed watching

Inside that hierarchy, I organize alphabetically by last name, then by year (following TCDB's order). 

For example, even though Greg Maddux is a Hall of Famer, won 300 games, and got 3,000 K's, his cards go on my San Diego Padres bin, under the letter M, then arranged by year, because he briefly played for the Padres. 

My Adrian Beltre cards were previously in the 3,000 hits bin, and I moved them to my HOF bin last January after he got the call.

Yes, it's a lot of work, but it makes sense to me, and I enjoy moving my cards up when a player achieves something, it feels like I'm celebrating.

I have the bulk of my cards organised by brand, set and year.

However, HOF players (plus a few others I enjoyed watching) go into folders. The players are ordered based off the year they were drafted then pick number. The cards are then ordered by how they appear on TCDb.

After that there are a bunch of harder to pull cards and RCs that are in top loaders along with all autos and memorabilia cards.

I'm a set collector. Anything that's not out on display is in binders by sets. Sets I'm working on are numerical. Once the set is done, I sort it into teams, with the Hall of Famers first, then the stars, on down. I like to remember the teams from each year, while the numbers obviously are just random numbers. That said, I've got about 200 cards on display, as well. 

v3

Ditto to this reply below. I'm closing in on 40 years of collecting, but I have not changed my organization standards since about 2005. Year/brand/card # for all traders. PC is teams and people and I sort/store/display those the same way.

Year, brand, card #

in alphabetical order Base set then parallels, then inserts.