Sunday Question
Yesterday I mentioned that I had a TON of cards laying around that needed to be logged in and put away. However, I don’t think anyone could truly understand how bad it has become. There are cards on my desk from a show I went to last September.
Now, it’s not that I don’t try and put them away. I make an attempt here and there to get stuff logged in an put away but I just haven’t reached the bottom of this pile. I know, I suck. The worst part of this “cardboard problem” is that I have way too many cards that I don’t even want of all teams.
Maybe a year or so ago I did a cleaning where I asked people which team they wanted and they paid me only for shipping and got all the cards. That helped me clean up a little bit. I guess the question/questions that are on my mind today are the following:
Do you find yourself behind on putting cards for your personal collection away? What do you do with all the inserts, parallels, and cards of the teams and guys you don’t collect?
I almost feel like we need to organize a mass trade of some sort. Like each blog would get to trade for their team. Like everyone sends me their Yankees (ONLY- Cano, Jeter, Martin, ARod) and I would send you your team. And we could get a bunch of blogs to participate and help everyone eliminate unwanted cards.
All the cards that I don’t collect end up in piles on my desk until they go into boxes. Once they are in boxes, I never look at them again unless someone is looking for something of that player or that set. Sometimes I wish I were the type of person who could just throw base cards out, but I just can’t do it.
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I feel your pain LOL. I myself have over a million cards, and about 200,000 cards that still need to be sorted. ALL of them need to inventoried still however. As I collect 1 of everything being an historian of the hobby and the game, the only ones I get rid of are doubles.
Good luck with your task at hand, and if you find yourself looking to do a spring cleaning, I collect Marlins, Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, and Celtics! lol
I only put away my PC cards. Probably becuase only my PC is organized. Everything else, regardless of value is just in random boxes. Not a great system, but like so many things you only take good care of what's important to you. If you do have a lot of Cardinals cards you need to move let me know; those I take care of.
RookieAddict
I've often felt guilty because I don't trade very often with other bloggers. But your situation is why I don't, or can't. I don't buy wax, blasters, or boxes. I only buy exactly the cards I want….I let someone else do the ripping. That leaves me with nothing left over to trade.
While I miss out on the excitement of the rip, I also avoid the stacks of unwanted clutter. Ebay has made it too easy to collect just the cards / sets I need. I buy what I need, put the cards into their binders, add them to my spreadsheet, and I'm good to go.
I'm right where you are.
I would like to be where 'Wrigley Wax' is.
I will never be able to avoid buying packs and boxes, being a set collector at heart. I make the odd dent in the piles I have waiting to be sorted and filed away but they seem to grow every so often.
I like the idea of a mass blog trade to get rid of players/cards I do not collect.
I have begun to pack up envelopes and just send them out to random people. As I get more boxes out of storage I will be sending more and more away to help cull the clutter.
On the plus side I always have something to do to pass the time between releases.
I'm with you too and my problem has only been made worse by moving recently. I'm slowly working my way through it, but with everything else I've got going on I'm guessing I'm still a few months away from getting things to where they need to be.
Ryan
As a set collector, I find it fairly easy to stay organized. When I start a set, I just grab one of the online checklists, import it into Excel and, as I open packs, increment my card counts. Cards I need go into one stack to put in the right binder, duplicates go into a second stack which goes into a box. It is a fairly easy system and I know pretty quickly what I need (count=0), what I have (count >= 1), and what I have to trade (count >= 2).
The only problems I have is when the early checklists are different than the actual set (2011 Heritage falls into this category) and when the checklist doesn't include team name.
At this very moment (cards are in front of the computer right now!) I am trying to get all my 2010 cards organized and filed, so I can get all my recent Dodger card acquistions organized and filed, so I can get all my recent non-Dodger, non-2010 cards organized and filed.
This is a big reason why I am not attempting to collect any 2011 product right now.
I'm in that same situation as well. I could have sworn that I put a bunch of stuff away about two months ago, but new stuff has come in and created new piles. It's mostly organized, but it isn't away. For example, there's a pile of new cards that have arrived from eBay and trades and then there are piles of the players that I collect just waiting to go into their appropriate shoeboxes. There are piles of cards set to go to other people and there are piles of cards from packs I've ripped open. It's just that there are too many piles and once they take over the workspace, it makes it tough to get out the boxes and shoeboxes that the cards are supposed to go into.
I'm tempted to do a webcam video of the actual contents of my desk instead of a bunch of individual posts so that I can just get everything away and start fresh.
I spent a month building a great big checklist of all the Red Sox cards ever made (base cards) and then deleting off all the ones I have. First thing I do when i get a new card is delete it off the list. So my Red Sox collection is always totally up to date. It took a long time but i like the results of my list. I add to it as new sets are released.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsSTHdRrSVUUdHZEMG1ZTktXUHR0SHIxZWYzOEFMVVE&hl=en#gid=0
I long ago quit busting boxes of cards so there isn't a bunch of stuff laying around continuously unorganized. I will get a deal at a card shop on a monster box filled with odds and ends that I will trade off to people so I usually have 1 box of cards that is unorganized.
I don't have any Cano,Jeter,Martin,Arod stuff but I would send you shipping cost for a bunch of Red Sox.
So after writing this post, I put away a pile of Cano autographs after logging them in and putting them into snap cases. I feel a little better.
I still have a massive pile of base cards and inserts of my guys, as well as GU cards of Pujols waiting to be taken care of.
Oddly enough, the piles all over the place are organized in my own way. I know exactly what I have and where.
Hi. My name is Marie and I am a hoarder.
After a rip, I sort by player if they're a superstar, then by team if they're a common, and at the end of the year I sell them as lots. They don't get much per lot but they add up enough to make it worthwhile. You just gotta do it as you go or else you're looking at a huge project…
Yeah, most of my newer stuff sits unsorted in two large boxes. Every now and then, I'll sift them for things to send out to other collectors, but don't feel guilty for letting those lie fallow. Leaving them in big, shiny stacks means there's a feeling of new discovery when I revisit them looking for specific player or team hits.
Yes, I'm behind. 😉 Some packs already posted to the pack break blog are sitting around waiting to be cataloged and put away. I have other packs I've yet to post to the blog because it's been quit swearing busy for me since MiLB season started because of the nightly updates plus having to spend the rest of the free time before bed working on my publication submission.
Inserts/parallels I don't care for get posted and see if they will eventually sell to someone building the insert/parallel set or to a player collector. Base cards/SP go towards my setbuilding and then duplicates get posted for sale. Inserts/parallels seem to sell pretty good, base cards not so much unless your name is 2010 Pro Debut in which everything seems to sell reasonably well.
Put me in the Behind – column. I get things at shows, and I want to do postings/show&tell on them etc. but never get to it – so thet sit until I finally put them away b-cuzz I forget what show they came from – someone sed that we think of buying books as buying the time to read them. Card purchases are the same – if only we could buy the time to appreciate them.
I can't even count how many cards I have. I have them in boxes in two states and will be moving soon to my first house and am cringing when it comes to thinking about how I am going to get these all to their final place in my new home. I mainly collect Yankees but have side projects as well. I once threw away my entire collection, save the really good cards when I moved from NY to PA. But, I managed to get even more cards in PA. What's worse is my wife is kind of a collector too. I feel your pain. I would love to trade away unwanted cards but is there REALLY such a term? If I didn't want them why would I have bought them in the first place? Oh, God! I think I might have a problem.
I cannot help myself – just love busting open box after box of cards, but literally hate all the time cataloging them. Over the last two years have changed by data base at least twice. which makes it twice as hard. Actually shocked my bride by giving some of my cards away to someone starting off in collecting. but isn't that the hobby.
After I complete a set, it gets put away in the dungeons of may card room, tell myself that I have built the set and don't need anymore of that one, but off I go to buy additional boxes to bust open.
I admit it – I am a box busting junkie – any support groups out there??
At the moment, not too bad. I have 5 envelopes that need to be opened, sorted, and placed in the appropriate receptacle. My wantlists and tradelists are slowly being updated.
Often it's just finding the time to do these things. We are all short on free time.