Randomness and Maybe Some Sorting

 

I started on a Herculean task of going through the boxes that make up the bulk of my trading card collection. Including almost a dozen 5 row monster boxes. Some of the monster boxes at least I had just one sport in, but not all of them. Two or three of them are sorted, or were. Many of the other boxes at first were just filled with random cards, unorgainized. A mishmash sometimes a box of all baseball, sometimes baseball and football, sometimes all 4 of the major sports plus Non-Sport and sometimes a full set of something would be in there. Lots of boxes filled with surprises. There were only a few boxes that I had remembered exactly what was what and maybe marked. Very few actually "organized" and "in order".

I have accumulated 1,000s upon 1,000s of trading cards in my life. I started so early as a kid I don't recall when I "first" started collecting. As a kid I was limited to what I could buy mostly due to allowance at the time and other interests. When I was in Jr. High a friend of mine introduced me to an LCS which is still in business, they are at their 4th location over the almost 40 years. Sometime around the late 1990s to early 2000s my collecting stopped a bit then with the internet and discovery of Ebay and online forums it picked up dramatically. 

Not finishing a major reorganization of my baseball collection (pre internet days) from being sorted by player name (with A to S maybe only Ms in binders and the rest of the alphabet neatly in boxes, to going back to the Year/Brand/Set way of things helped make the collection just a heap of a hoard of cardboard. Add to that Ebay auctions and eventually "Buy It Now"s listings, Card  Forums, Card Purchasing sites, group box breaks, and team trading groups, plus a lifelong tendency to procrastinate and you have the organizational mess I am in today. 

Things improved in  late 2023 when I had a mandatory apartment inspection, where I went from probably a level 3 hoard down to level 1.5 my collection went from being almost anywhere in my apartment mostly in boxes but also a few dozen binders on shelves (in the den and dining rooms) to having those now 35 binders in the living room and dining room on shelves and the boxes in the den filling and overflowing two 6 foot tall bookcases. Unfortunately most of the boxes are unmarked and as I mentioned earlier and are unorganized. Plus there were tons of cards that were condensed from boxes and piles of original packages to just the cards in large non-card boxes.

Enough about that messy stuff. I am getting past all that.

Over a recent weekend I made a bit of progress all but one of the monster boxes are just one sport or non-sport now and some other boxes the same. I have a few large boxes that still have mixes of card types to go through and many small card boxes to sort through.

The more I work with the boxes the more I know of what I actually have, or rather where it actually is or could be now. There are a few boxes that I am dreading organizing but I will have to get to them eventually.

Oh I didn't mention the unopened materials I have. There are some blaster boxes, a few of those random pack boxes in various forms by Fairfield and a bunch of packs all over the place. I also have about 1/2 a dozen unopened boxes from the  "Collectible Card Club" I used to get the monthly boxes of 15 packs of cards of both Baseball and Football from them.

I also shipped off 140 football cards to CheckOutMyCards (COMC). Now some people refer to that site as "Com-C". I don't like that name for it and I don't use it I usually say "Check out my cards" or "COMC" (saying each letter like an acronym). My blogging I usually just use COMC and readers will read it the way they like. 

I recently signed up on "BuySportsCards.com" (BSC) as a buyer primarily and then as a seller. I will try my hand at that. I started populating my "store" over there. My seller handle is my usual "captkirk42". So as I am sorting stuff I am putting doubles and very shiny cards aside to go to sale somewhere.

Now part of my Project Hercules effort will be to set up some boxes of the cards I want to sell. Most of these cards I will have to find ways of getting rid of in large batches because trying to sell everything card by card is more than insane and mostly impossible.

Organizing Some Random Thoughts

A while back now, in reading a post about organization from a fellow card blogger Mike (member of TCC and a Facebook Pal) on his card blog, he also has a comics/toy collecting blog which was his original catch-all blog, I was reminded of an organizing rant post I did in November of last year (2012). His dilemma is frighteningly similar to mine. Years and years of having cards in boxes (or elsewhere) not organized or semi-organized and needing to be put in binders or displayed in someway. Apparently we are not alone in being overwhelmed by a hoard of cards. Colby over at Cardboard Collections  sometimes feels defeated. Oh and for those who didn't know Greg The Night Owl is NOT a pack rat (but he might play one on TV) here is his proof.  I'm not either, but I don't have any proof to disprove it yet. I'm lazy and organizationally challenged. Ironically when I was a kid I was a neat freak, I think public school corrupted me. So being disorganized can sometimes be a common enough feeling.

In my previous post (mentioned in the paragraph above) the first part was another kind of rant when I was in a bit of a funk about the hobby and wondering "Why?" then I settled down some and talked about an idea I have had for a while, but is not very practical. 

The idea was this: Have a service company that will sort and organize your cards for you. The basic premise is for collectors to send their collection, or the unorganized part of their collection they want/need organized with instructions on how they want it organized (by brand/by year/by team or whatever). The service then sorts the cards and puts them in boxes or binders based on the instructions, and service level purchased. It would probably make extra money selling the supplies or at least the binders, or heck supplies cost could be figured into the processing/organizing fee.

This would not be a grading/authorizing/verification/slabbing service there are plenty of those kinds of services. I haven't thought all the details out on if graded cards would or could be entered into the mix, probably not.

An obvious problem would be the cost of shipping cards in those volumes. More so on the company sending out the neatly organized collection in spiffy new binders (or boxes). Keeping a huge inventory of all the needed supplies would initially be a pain: Having a large inventory of the right kind of binder, the binder pages, penny sleeves toploaders, card boxes.

Then there is the space needed while organizing. A nice clear table large enough to hold a bunch of cards and some assorted supplies. There might have to be some sort of limit to the number of cards sent to be organized at a time "x" number of 5000 card monster boxes worth.

For right now I need to actually start doing all the sorting, organizing and proper storing of my own card hoard first. I have a problem of knocking down card piles and having to restack them and in the process their original "order that they came in" gets totally messed up. Someone else blogged about knocking over leaning pile towers of cards some months back sorry I forget who it was. Messy unorganized apartments don't help either.

hmm. I stumbled upon this link: "How to Organize Your Trading Cards" It is a "Simple" guide to organizing your cards too simple. Sadly it is way too simple and looks to be geared toward beginning collectors not seasoned collectors that are re-organizing for the zillionth time. There are other "similar" links including this one: "How to Organize Baseball Cards". Again not really for seasoned collectors ((Sigh!))

Another problem I have that contributes to my collection not being totally organized is my backlog of neat and fascinating cards and oddball sets that I have waiting in the wings to be blogged about. I have one set that I started a post about. I don't remember when I first wrote it up. I have updated it several times, and I still need to get the cards scanned. I had to add the set to zistle since it was such an oddball set.

Related Links:
How to Store and Organize Trading Cards
5 Easy Steps to an Organized Sports Card Collection *


*This seems to be the best advice I've seen yet. I already do some of what is mentioned in the article.

**Sorry for the blurry pics they were quick and dirty shots taken with my webcam handheld.

Random card thoughts

Sometimes I get into a little bit of a blogging funk and think "Why bother"? Any cards that I get, unless they truly are 1/1s, are just one of thousands, maybe tens of thousands and are most likely going to already be blogged about somewhere, or part of a preview review of some product that is coming out. The one thing that keeps me going when thinking like that is the thought that my take on the individual card is unique. I might be the only one who actually likes a particular card or set out of the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of card bloggers out in the blogiverse (Blogsphere to most).

I don't do those custom jobbers like some bloggers do. Well I don't normally make custom cards, I do have a digital one (front only) as part of some of my logos. I wonder how many of them (the custom cardmaker bloggers) actually print-out their creations? Or do they just keep them digital like E-Topps sort of was mostly? 

I do know that there are some super popular trends, or at least continual trends of the card manufacturers that I really can not stand *cough*rip cards*cough*. I could list them here but I don't want to offend any of my two or three regular readers that may like those particular trends.

**Sigh** Negative thinking often reminds me that most of my collection right now resembles a hoarders nest. I know what I want to do with most of it but gettting motivated to do it and taking the time it will take to do it is one of the things I lack right now. Oh and Yes I do use zistle.com (My Zistle) I am far from having EVERYTHING listed there.

Sometimes I wish there was an organizing company that you could ship a box of cards to with instructions on how you like your cards organized and they will sort and organize and put your cards into binders for you, or whatever containers you prefer. If I knew I could make money off doing that and "retire" from my regular job I would maybe consider doing something like that.That whole concept however would be impractical and would cost tons to ship the cards and then you would have to wait for your cards to be returned, and insure your treasure for tons and determining how long it would take to organize and... Oh it just wouldn't work out for anyone. Or would it? Getting fellow collectors to help you organize wouldn't work either because they would be envious of some of your collection and pester you for some of them. Some more devious collectors might even try to "palm" some cards off of you. OK forget I said any of that organization stuff.

OK now just to keep up with the randomness of this post here are some random cards (fronts only):

1972 Topps Baseball 11 Bobby Valentine Dodgers

 1976 Topps Football 145 Roman Gabriel Eagles

1984 Fleer V 21 "Ready For Action" 

Faye Grant as Juliet "Julie" Parrish

I feel like showing a ton more cards for some reason. OK maybe one more since the Hockey season will probably NOT happen this year here is a card I don't have anymore I either sold it or traded it away. It was my first freebie from sportscardforum I had won it in one of their forum contests. I think it was a new members contest.

2006-07 Upper Deck "Be A Player" Signatures -

JS Jason Spezza Senators

OK so there you have it how much more random can I be? Oh one final thought If you are following me and have my blog linked on your blog, but I don't have yours linked Please let me know so I can reciprocate.