Getting Things Organized

While I was on my blogging hiatus back in the fall and early winter, one of my goals before the baby was born was to finally get my collection organized in a decent manner. The fact that it wasn't organized completely drove me nuts. I tried binders but that got too expensive having to buy pages and the binder itself. Finally, I finally just said "forget this" and I bought five 3200 count boxes to go with one I already had from the card shop. Over the course of two weeks, I emptied the binders organized the cards by team, and started loading them into the boxes. As you can see by the picture above, I filled up all five.

I took a bunch of top loaders I had laying around and used them as dividers. I bought a pack of cheap index cards to use as labels and I cut them to fit in the top loaders. Once I finished sorting everything, I labeled the boxes on the front as to what's in them. I'm pretty pleased with the way I turned out, although I've got one extra 3200 count box and in order to get some extra room, I'm going to split the teams up into American and National League and have two boxes for each league. 

For my Reds cards, I sorted them by decade (80s, 90s, etc.) into their own box for easy sorting and the ability to quickly go through them at a later date to pull out duplicates and cards for my player collections, which might get put into a binder at a later date.

For my non-baseball cards (hockey, football, wrestling, etc.), I managed to get them all into one box with room to spare. The hockey cards are again split up by team, football are split by Bengals and "other", wrestling and UFC cards have their own row, and miscellaneous stuff has some space as well.

Here's my trade box. It's a 1600 count shoebox style box. Again, I used top loaders and index cards for dividers. Although you can't see it, underneath each person's name is a brief summary of what they collect so I can quickly reference it without getting out my master list. The empty space in the box is usually occupied by a Ziploc bag that has cut up binder pages in it that I use for PWEs and a print out of my "trader address book" with everyone's addresses.

That's the majority of my collection organized. There's a few more minor things I have to work on such as sorting and paging up some sets and going through the handful of cards I have in storage in the garage. I'm really happy that I was able to get everything organized mostly and there is a semblance of order with everything..

The Real Cardboard Clubhouse

Something I've been meaning to do for a while is show off how I have my collection is stored. Finding the time to do it though was another matter. Luckily, the "Card Cave Contest" that is being run by Judson at My Cardboard Habit was enough to give me some motivation to finally take some pictures and write about my card room.

The primary room I use for my card collection is our spare bedroom. Never mind the Pikachu comforter on the bed, it belongs to my son as this room will one day be his once we get a few minor electrical things fixed up in here. He has his own room currently but he's starting to outgrow it. As of now, we share the "blue room" as we call it, he plays with the trains in the floor or other toys he brings in and I sort, scan, and organize cards. It's a win win and also gives us some "boy time" as my wife calls it.

Any card room must have a TV right? Normally I'll have hockey, baseball, or an old pay-per-view show from the WWE Network on. However, sometimes I'll put cartoons on if my son wants to watch them. Oh, and yes, those are rabbit ears you see behind it. That's because we don't have cable hooked up in the room. Behind the TV we have a Roku hooked up and we can watch stuff on cable that way. Under the TV is my trusty scanner that I drag out and sit in the floor next to my laptop whenever I need to do a mass scanning session, which has lately been on Sunday afternoons.

I keep all my binders on the shelf in the closet along with my trade/supply box and a spare 600-count box for whenever I need it. Here are a few close ups.

As you can see, nearly each binder has a card or sticker on the side of it. The ones with cards I know have been gone through and organized. The ones with the paper labels still need to be gone through.

The Topps binder is where I keep all my pre-1980 cards. The binder with the Biggio card on it is my 90s binder and the one with the Rollie Fingers card is my 80s binder. The other two as I mentioned earlier need to be gone through to weed out duplicates and any other cards that don't fit in the collection.

Here's the trade box. As of right now it's pretty light but as I've been going through my binders and plucking out cards that don't really fit, if they fit with someone on my trade list, then in the box it goes. The box on top of that is empty and I keep it for whenever I need it. Mostly it's the box I take with me when I go to card shows.

The bed I showed earlier has three cubbyholes in the headboard which I use for quick storage, mainly of stuff that needs to be scanned. The empty Pokemon packs belong to my son. He's really gotten into  Pokemon cards and loves opening new packs.

The bed also has two sliding drawers in the bottom of it. Sometimes they're not the easiest things to pull out but they provide some much needed extra storage. What you see above it the left side drawer with my Starting Lineup figures, extra pages, and a bunch of misc stuff. Under the figures is where I've got my 1984 Topps set at. It's all paged up and just needs a binder right now.

The right side drawer is where I keep my football/misc binder and my wrestling binder. Eventually I'll combine them into one. The random stacks you see there are just that, random stacks of cards that either need to be put away or gone through. As of this writing, I have done just that.

The other half of the the drawer is were I keep any boxes or packs I'm waiting to tear into, a freezer bag full of top loaders and penny sleeves, and my old Reds programs from when I was a kid.

This box is a liar. It says it's the "to be filed/organized" box but currently, it's where a lot of my cards from 2010-present are as I really don't have any binders to put them in. So I guess the organized part is right. There's also a good sized stack of 1993 Donruss in there as I don't have any place currently for those either.

Not only are there cards, but it's also where I store my wrestling VHS collection along with a few random wrestling DVDs. The Headliner figures on the top of the shelf came as part of a trade last winter.

On the walls I've got my Reds banner, a certificate from my son's first Reds game, and a pennant I bought when I visited spring training back in 2011.

Here's the other pennants that adorn the wall. The blue 1988 All-Star and the white Reds one I had in my grandparents basement when I spent summer days there as a kid. The others are ones I've added over the years but the Devils one belongs to my wife.

That's it for the "blue room" but there is one more area to show off.

The giant bookcase in our master bedroom. It's filled with my wife's Funko and Pokemon collection. Some of the Funkos are mine but they are mostly hers.

Here's the bottom portion of the bookcase. My blu-rays and our video games are towards the bottom where you see the jack-o-lantern box. Look closely, you see that Reds box? That's where all my good stuff like relic cards, autograph cards, and misc cool cards are housed.

A close up look, lets peer inside ...

Just like I said, relic, autograph, and other misc neat cards live within. To be honest, the box is almost full, but there's always room for more.

Hope you enjoyed this tour around the actual cardboard clubhouse. I definitely enjoyed showing off how I store and organize everything.