Night Owl Cards

  I did some light card organizing over the weekend. I moved my 1983 Kellogg's 3-D complete set from binder pages to top loaders, as it's one of the later sets that I'm confident won't crack when confined like that (unlike mid-'70s 3-D sets).   I also moved a small stack of 1981 and 1982 Topps stickers into leftover pages I had bought for early '50s Bowman cards. It took me forever to realize that the stickers would fit that size, too.   I have less than 20 stickers from the '81 set, so it fit into one page (pockets double-bagged). That's a good thing because my 1981 Topps binder is large and STUFFED.    There's a reason for that but just to illustrate how large the '81 binder is, here is a photo of the 1980 Topps and 1981 Topps binders -- both flagship sets complete -- side-by-side.   The 1980 binder is 44 pages (double-bagged, of course) and the 1981 binder -- maybe a little overstuffed is 71 pages -- 71!!!   Where does that compare among the l...

  My collection storage system is built around binders. Boxes are secondary. In a perfect world, all my cards would be in binders and there would be no boxes. But boxes are easier to store than binders. Binders take up more space. That's a trade-off I've been willing to make, for having a much more pleasing card-room display (shelves of just boxes just doesn't cut it for me). But it means I'm always in space conservation mode. For example, a couple of weeks ago, Kenny/ZippyZappy asked me if I could use any binders, he had received some regulation-size ones from his father. Always mindful of space issues -- I am almost all out of rows on my two sizable shelving units -- I said maybe one or two. That's not "one or two." That's six. Actually, he sent seven -- one is out of the box for some mid-1980s Fleer repurposing. So, yeah, I don't know where the heck those are going. Right now the box is in the attic, waiting for when I need them, or I carve out...

Even though I've only recently announced my more focused emphasis on set collecting and easing up a bit on the Dodgers completion quest, it's still been quite awhile since I've spent meaningful time with my Dodgers binders. There are a couple of stacks of Dodger cards waiting to enter those hallowed binders. I usually update them after the most recent card show (at only 2 or 3 shows a year, it works out well). But after the last show in October, I didn't bother. So, they wait. Also, it has been awhile since I received a card package like the one that was sent recently by cynicalbuddha at Collector's Crack . This was exclusively Dodgers, and mostly ones from that decade or so when I wasn't collecting. I used to receive packages like this on the regular. It would make me flock to my binders to check whether I needed the cards. Then, since my knowledge of that time has always been limited, I'd have to check them again, because I can't retain anythi...

There is a hierarchy to the cards in my collection and the best of the best cards in my collection are stored in binders. I haven't counted the number of binders I own lately. A quick run-through in my brain says somewhere between 70 and 80. Almost all of those binders are double-bagged (two cards per pocket) so that tells you how many cards I think are special. The majority of the cards in my binders (with the exception of the Dodgers collection) are part of completed sets or sets I intend to complete. If the card isn't part of a set I want to complete or a Dodger, there's a good chance it's going in a box. When I add cards to a binder that is not yet completed, I will usually organize the set by team. My completed sets are organized by card number. Putting an incomplete set together by team is just an easier way to store them when a set is not finished. When I start to get really serious about trying to complete a set, I'll put what I have of it in orde...

This is probably the busiest corner of my card room. This is where the 2015 cards converge with the set binders, which are adjacent to some Dodgers binders, which are next to a stack of night cards and assorted other cards. The overriding theme of this room -- besides cards -- is binders. There are stacks and stacks of binders. As I visualize the room in my head, I count 11 different stacks of binders, with five-to-six binders in each stack (I don't dare pile on any more than that). But I've done a post about my card room before . This post is intended to piggyback on The Shlabotnik Report's post about his binders. It was an interesting look at where he gets the binders, what they look like, etc. I thought I would do the same. I have maybe 60 or so binders, and some of them go back to the very first time I found out that there were binders specifically created to store baseball cards. The earliest binders I owned -- received through a mail-order catalog or from...